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PHITICII LETTERS, 

ADDRESSED TO D«. NELSON. 



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Diagraui of the Unttlc of Tippecanoe. 

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1 Prcscott, 3 Spelling, 5 T.araljop, 7fUwkins, U.S. inf. commarnled by Majnr 
Floyd.— 2 Brown, 4 Cook, OPefor.s, HlSiiriou, T'. f?. inf. cominanrlod ' 
Baen.— 9 Scotr, 11 Albriglit, Iiitliaiia f.iililia, rfiiniiianded by Major Rc' V 
10 Warwick, 12 Wilson, 13 Ifargrovi-. l-l Wilkiiis, commanded by Li \ 
Decker.- -15 RoUb, 16 (Jciircr, inoiirwod riflemen commanded by Majt 
— 17. Spencer, abunlcd rillemen, cbmmandcJ l>y Capt. Spencer.— 18 
, 20 Parke, wagoons, commanddil by Major Daviess. 

NEW-YORIv. 

1S40. 



THREE ^ 



POLITICAL LETTERS, 



ADDRESSED TO 



Dr. WOLFRED NELSON, 



LATE OF LOWER CANADA, NOW OF rLATTSBURCII, N. Y. 



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V 

BY Til: .fi:iFi:RSO\ SFTIIEULAND. 



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NEW-YORK. 
ISIO. 



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LETTER No. I. 

New- York^ June 4, 1840. 
To Dr. WoLFRED Nelpon, 

Late uf Lower Canada^ now of Plaitsburgk, N. Y. : 

Dear ^ir — A gentleman who professes to reside in Clinton 
county, and to bo acquainted with you, has just informed me 
that you are now eniraging yourself in active measures for the 
support of file political party in our country, denominated and 
known as British Whigs; and that you are employing your in- 
fluence with the people among whom you reside, in order to in- 
duce them, at the coming election, to cast their votes for Gene- 
ral Harrison, and such other candidates as shall be proposed by 
the British Whig party, which has put him in nomination. 

Robbed of your property and driven from your homes by a 
merciless British Government, you and others of your country- 
men have sought an asylum within the borders of these states, 
where, by the blessings of Divine Providence, who made power- 
ful the arm of our forefathers, and gave liberty to our country, 
the poor subject escaping from the dungeon of the despot, and 
no longer dreading tlie hand of his oppressor, may set himself 
down in quiet beside the banished noble, and the dethroned mo- 
narch, who here reside, fearless of the machinations of a corrupt 
court, or the waking vengeance of an injured people — and, here 
you have the undoubted right to attach yourself to whichever of 
our political parties your judgment or your partiality may di- 
rect, and it is not for me to say where, or where not, you shall 
use your influence. Yet, sir, as we are now engaged in a politi- 
cal contest o^ no ordinary importance — but one of the deepest 
interest not only to ourselves, but to those who shall follow after 
us, and in which, as I conceive, are put in issue the funda- 
mental principles of democracy, and the question whether we 
shall longer remain as a free republic, with plain and simple 
laws, formed in accordance with democratic principles, and ha- 
ving effect alike upon the rich and the poor — or wh(>ther we are 
thus soon to be deprived of them and forced to accept of a gilded 
tyrannous aristocracy, who would tread us to the earth, I think 
myself justified in the course 1 have assuoied. 



It is but recently I saw you struggling for the liberties of your 
own country, and with your sword, endeavoring, as I supposed, 
to establish in the Canadas an independent democratic form of 
government, instead of the wicked and unjust colonial system, 
which was then, and is now still maintained therein by the bayo- 
nets of the British nation ; and then, being, as I am, an ardent 
admirer of democratic institutions, and an enthusiastic advocate 
ot political freedom — and being moved in your behalf — and with 
the desire to obtain the small share of applause which might 
chance to accrue to one of the humble agents in the erection of 
another independent republic on the continent of America, 1 put 
on my sword and joined the people of your country with a view 
to give you aid : and, therefore, I believe it proper for me to in- 
quire at this time whether you are now mistaken in your course 
— or, if I have been deceived as to your intentions. 

You having once embarked in the effort to achieve the inde- 
pendence of your country, and having staked your fortune and 
your life in the cause, I am not willing to believe you have aban- 
doned that cause ; and I must suppose you still to entertain the 
hope that your country, at no very distant day, will be able, in 
despite of the enemies of liberty on this side of the St. Lawrence, 
and the British power on the other, to assume a station among 
the independent nations of the earth. I must, also, believe that, 
at the present moment, in all your public acts, you have in view 
to promote the liberation of the Canadas from British thraldom ; 
and I cannot suppose that you and your compatriots in your late 
effort to rid yourselves of the odious domination of Great Bri- 
tain, had nothing save independence for your country in view — 
but must still entertain the belief that the object of the struggle 
you commenced, was to raise up democratic institutions upon 
the ruins of British tyranny. Had I believed it your intention to 
establish any other form of government in the Canadas than 
that of a representative democracy — and that you had design- 
ed merely to rid the people of your country from one hateful evil, 
that you might saddle them with another as grievous, I should 
never have been with you. 

There has been some opportunity afforded me to acquire an 
intimate knowledge of the affairs of the Canadas, and from such 
knowledge, I am satisfied that neither peace, repose, nor prospe- 
rity can be hoped for in them, while those provinces are under 
British Colonial rule. The parasites of present power will there 
hold on to their offices and sinecures with such tenacity, that 
nothing shall sever their hold but that instrument with which 
Alexander cut the gordian knot — the sword. Nothing but vio- 
lent means can give to the Canadian people a government, or 
put an end to the trampling upon their rights by British tyrants I 



And is not political liberty worth fighting for — and Ihe freedom 
of a nation a proper justification for an appeal to arms? That 
it is so, the majority of the people of this country will bear wit- 
ness. Yet, if no better change could be hoped for the Canadas 
than has been obtained for Greece, I must confess that my inte- 
rest, or at least my interference, as well as that of the democra- 
tic part of my countrymen, would be most likely withheld. A 
Christian's dungeon is a matter of the same kind with a Maho- 
metan's bowstring — nor is a Prince's sword of less abhorrence 
than a Pacha's scimetar, to an American freeman. 

If, as I have supposed, you are desirous of establishing for 
your own country a democratic form of government, from whom 
injthis country, allow me to inquire, do you expect sympathy and 
support for your people ? Can you expect to find any honest 
feeling in your behalf, resting with the British Whigs of our 
country ■? Do you hope for assistance from that portion of our 
people who have put forward General Harrison as an available 
candidate for the Presidency ?(1.) That you cannot, I believe 

(1. ) Copy of a Letter from the Chairman of the Central Committee of the 
Britisli Whig Young Men of the State of New-York, accompanying a 
Circular distributed just previous to the nomination of General Harri- 
son for the Presidency. 

"Albany, Oct. 23, 1839. 

" To THE EniTOR OF THE SaNGAMON JoURNAL: 

" Dear Sir:— I send you [coneiijentially] a Circular which is circu- 
lating here, and is producing great effect. Mr. Clay cannot possibly get 
this State, or New-England. Our only hope is in Gen. Harrison, who 
is perfectly unexceptionable, and has no serious opposition to him on any 
possible ground. The leaders do not feel, perhaps, ae sure of getting 
paid for their services as with other candidates who have impliedly come 
into their views. IJut we can make a glorious rally under his banner, and 
reach the hearts of the people, with hi.s services and virtues. (Jen. Scott 
has been pushed by a few Anti-Claymcn, but it is all nonsense. I send 
you a pamphlet which is also circulating here, and which shows that no 
jacksoa men or Clintonians can or will support him. The great point 
now is to have the public voice indicate a preference, or there maybe fa- 
tal mir.takes made at Harrisburg. I am the Chairman of the State Cen- 
tral Committee of Yoimg Men, but do not speak oflicially. I should like 
to forward some papers and letters to your delegates, but their residence 
is not mentioned. Will you publish their residence and send me a paper? 
"Yours truly, S. DE WITT BLOODGOOD." 

Extract from the Circular, 
I" Confidential,"] 

•' Our party leaders want sagacity, or as I prefer styling it, philosophy. 
They act as if mankind were always actuated by the best motives, and 
that the holding up an abstract truth, is the pledge of victory. Not so, 
Nations, like individuals, often rush blindly to ruin, from passion, preju- 
dice, ambition, and many other causes. It is in vain to opp«se their will 
when they take a particular bias. They who attempt it are sacrificed, 



6 

you will be made to understand. It is our democracy alone trhfi? 
will give you support. Those who compose the British Whig- 
party cannot favor a revolution in the Canadas, without violating 
their own principles, and assailing the policy of their party— -aa 
any revolution in the Canadas, to be successful, must be carried 
on with a view not less for the establishment of a free represen- 
tative republic — than for independence. 

By consulting the pages of our history, you wi!l be informed 
that when the people of tnis country assumed the sword, and 
stood forth upon their rights— when they took the field against 
British tyranny and the despotism of colonial rule, the object for 
which they united in their struggle, was independence. That 
then the experiment of a free democratic government had not 
been tried — and that when independence was gained for our 
country, our people were by no means unanimous in its adop- 
tion. While they had all, alike, entered heartily into the con- 
test for independence, one part were for a democracy, and the 
other for an aristocracy. Jefferson, Franklin, and otliers, enter- 
taining the same liberal principles, and who were front and fore- 
most in the cause, were democrats, and battled for democracy(2.) 

and thus history tells us with its monitory pnge, of the downfull of p;itri- 
ots vainly struggling against thoir erring countrymen, and tinally of the 
downfall of the masses themselves. This is the law of nature and the 
will of Providence. Let us nluo apply this fact to politics. We cannot 
expect perfection in the people at large; we can only rely on their gene- 
ral good intentions, sustained by a consciousness that their own interests 
individually, are at stake with those of the nuass. When they arc right 
in the main, it is as much as we should expect. We cannot hope that 
they will cease to be men in order to please us. In this knowledge con- 
sists the tact of ihe Administration party. They studiously seek to know 
the public will, and they follow it long enough to profit by its force and 
power. How adroitly tliey availed themselves of the popularity of Jack- 
son ! By bad measures ttiey have lost much of its advantage, and by 
prosecuting such a scheme as the Sub-Treasury, they will lose more. 
But still they are strongly entrenched, and we must carry their entrench- 
ments, or be doomed to political slavery. How can this be done ? Only 
by uniting on the man who has less opposition to him than another. »S'u- 
perior or sjpleitdid taleiUs or exalttd claims are not the questiorts to be consi- 
dered.^' 

(2.) Thomas Jefferson was the author of the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, and its sentiments may justly be considered peculiarly his. Here 
are the principles of true democracy, viz: 

" That all men are created equal ; that they are endowed by their Cre- 
ator with certain inalienable rights ; that among these are hfe, liberty, 
nnd the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments 
are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of 
the governed: that whenever any form of government becomes destruc- 
tive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to 
institute a new government, laying the foundation on such principles, 



Kfl well as indcppndonce, while Adams, Hamilton, and their as- 
sociates, who had entered into the cause as ardently as the oth- 

and orgarii/ing its puvvcrs in such form, aa to tlicm shall seem must likely 
to cflt'ct ihcir safety and happincHs." 

'I'hfsc pridriplos wore upheld by the true republicans in the conven- 
tjon fur the fnrdialion of our consliiulion. 

(JKoJUif. .Mxsdx of Virpinin. (page 754 Ft of the Madison Papers,) " ar* 
Rued alroiigly lor ;ui eh-rtioti of llio larper brsiin h [n( the legi.shiture] by 
tlio people. Il \Mis ti^ be llie crarid depository of the democratic princijjle 
of the governint'ijt." " We oiiplit toalleml to llienplits of every class of 
tho people." " Kvery sclCsh luolive, every firnily [itlachiiicnt, oupht to 
recommend such a system of poliry a« would provide no less carefully for 
the rightit and liappincsu of the lowest, than of the highest, order of citi- 
zens." 

Again: pnue DM, " Ife took this orca.sion to repeat, that, notwithstand- 
ing his sohriiiide to estnblisli n iiulional govrrnment, he never would 
agree to nboluh the stale govertjtuent.s, or render thera absolutely insig- 
nitlcant. 'i'hey were as necessary as tlie general government, and he 
would bo eijually careful to preserve them." 

Again: page ii2<)l), " Having for his primary object — for the polur star 
of his pohtir.il con<liict — the prcjiervation of the rights of the pet>ple, he 
held il as an essriuiul [)oinl, as the very palladmrn of civil liberty, that the 
great officers of sLite, and partieiilarly the exeeutive, .ijiould at fixed pe- 
riods return to that mass from wliieh they were at first taken, in order that 
they may feel and respect those rigtits and interests which arc again to bo 
person illy valuable to them." 

Mr. Mapi^on (p. 7.">,'i,) " Conviderrd the popular election of one branch 
of the nation:il legislature as essential to every plan of free government." 

Mr. W'li.soN of IVniisylvania, page 801, said: " Ilr uifihed for vigor in 
the government, but he wished that vicorons authority to (low immedi- 
ately from the N'mlimnte Kouree of all authority. The government ought 
to possess, not only, first, {he force, but s cond the miudur srtixe, of the 
people at large. The legislature ought to be the most exact transcript 
of the whole society. Representation is mado necessary only because 
It is impossible for the people to act collectively." 

JoM.N Dickinson, of Delaware, p;ico I'-il.'J, said: "lie doubted the 
policy ol interweaving into a repnl)lican constitution a veneration for 
Tsealih. He had always understood that a veneration for poverty and 
virtue were the objects of republirau encouragement." 

In leltrr 117, vol. -1. of his eorrespondenrf. 'riir)M\s JKKFKnsofJ says: 
" I would say. that the peoi)le, beinp the niily depo.sitory of power, should 
exercise in person every function which their (|ualifications enable them 
to exercise eoiiMistently with the order ami security of society; that wo 
now find them equal to the election of those who shall be invested with 
their oxeeiitive and legislative powers, and to act themselves in the ju(h- 
ciary, as judges in questions of fact, that t'lC range of their powers ought 
to be enlarged," 6ic, 

Again: letter 131. " On this view of the import of the term Rrpubiic, 
instead of saying, as has been said, 'that it may mean any tiling or no- 
thing,' we may say. with truth and meaning, that governments are more 
or less rei>iibliran, as they liavp more or less of the elemer t ol popular 
elertion and control in their composition: and lieheving, as I do, thai tho 
rau.Ha of the citizens is the safest depository of thoirown rights, and espe- 



ers, for independence, but not for democracy, were aristocrats, 
and in favor of the establishment of an aristocratical government 

cially that the evils flowing from the duperies of the people, are less 
injurious than those from the egoism of their agents, I am a friend to that 
composition of government which has in it the most of this ingredient." 

Again, letter 132 : " Our legislators are not sufficiently apprised of the 
rightful hmits of their powers, that their true office is to declare and en- 
force only our natural rights and duties, to take none of thera from us.— 
No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of 
another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him: 
Every man is under the natural duty of contributing to the necessities of 
the society, and this is all the laws should enforce on him : And no man 
having a natural right to be the judge between himself and another, it 
is his natural duty to submit to the umpirage of an impartial third. When 
the laws have declared and enforced all this, they have fulfilled their 
functions, and the idea is quite unfounded, that on entering into society 
we give up any natural right." 

Again, letter 135: " At the birth of our republic, I committed that opi- 
nion to the world; in the draft of a constitution annexed to the Notes on 
Virginia, in which a provision was inserted for a representation perma- 
nently equal. The infancy of the subject at that moment, and our inex- 
perience' of self-government, occasioned gross departures in that draft, 
from genuine republican canons. In truth, the abuses of monarchy had 
so much filled all the space of political contemplation, that we imagined 
every thing republican that was not monarchy. We had not yet pene- 
trated to the mother principle, that ' governments are republican only in 
proportion as they embody the will of their people, and execute it.' " — 
''The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of 
every citizen, in his person and property, and in their management. 
Try by this, as a tally, every provision of our constitution, and see if it 
hangs directly on the will of the people. Reduce your legislature to a 
convenient number for full, but orderly discussion. Let every man who 
fights or pays, exercise his just and equal right in their election. Sub- 
mit them to approbation or rejection at short intervals. Let the execu- 
tive be chosen in the same way, and for the same term, by those whose 
agent he is to be; and leave no screen of a council behind which to skulk 
from responsibility." 

Again, letter 149: " It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal 
truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, 
is absolute also; in theory only, at first, while the spirit of the people is 
up, but in practice, as fast as that relaxes. Independence can be trusted 
no where but with the people in mass. They are inherently indepen- 
dent of all but moral law." 

Again, letter 172: "Ours, (the object of the republican party,) on the 
contrary, was to maintain the will of the majority of the convention, and 
of the people themselves. We believed, with them, that man was a ra- 
tional animal, endowed by nature with rights, and with an innate sense 
of justice; and that lie could be restrained from wrong and protected in 
right, by moderate powers, confided to persons of his own choice, and 
held to their duties by dependence on his own will. We believed that the 
complicated organization of kings, nobles, and priests, was not the wisest 
nor best to effect the happiness of associated men; that wisdom and vir- 
tue were not hereditary; that the trappings of such a machinery con- 



for our country. (3.) The persons who composed this aristocra- 
tic party were at first called Federalists. 

eumed by their expense those earnings of industry they were meant to 
protect, and, by the inequalities they produced, exposed liberty to suffer- 
ance. We believed that men, enjoying in ease and security the full fruits 
of their own industry, enlisted by all their interests on the side of law 
and order, habituated to think for themselves, and follow their reason as 
their guide, would be more easily and safely governed, than witli minds 
nourished in error, and vitiated and debased, as in Europe, by ignorance, 
indigence and oppressioii. The cherishnient of the people then was our 
principle, the fear and distrust of them, that of the other party." 

In the phikmthropic and consoling faith of a true democrat, Mr. Jeffer- 
son lived and died. But ten days before his death, in reference to the De- 
claration of Independence and its fruits, he said, letter 193: 

" May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts soon 
er, to others later, but tinally to all,) the signal of arousing men to 
burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had 
persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and 
security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, 
restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom 
of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. — 
The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every 
view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with 
saddles on their backs, nor a favorite few booted and spurred, ready to 
ride them legitimately, by the grace of God." 

These extracts distinctly show that broad differences of opinion existed 
among the Fathers of the Republic. These diflerences exhibited them- 
selves in the conventions to form the state constitutions, and more strik- 
ingly in the convention that formed the federal constitution. The demo- 
cratic principle struggled to give the people as direct a control as possible 
over the general government, leaving to the states all powers not ab- 
solutely necessary to the general welfare, while the anti-democratic 
sought to supersede the state governments, and remove the executive 
and senatorial branches of the general government entirely, and the re- 
presentative as far as practicable, from the popular control. Witli some 
concessions to the anti-democratic party in the election of the executive 
and senate, which the spirit of our people has rendered nugatory in prac- 
tice, the constitution oflered to the people of the states was essentially 
democratic, and was adopted with a few explanatory amendments. 

(3.) As early as 1787, John Adams, than whom no man entered with 
more energy and devotion into the cause of the revolution, wrote and pub- 
lished a series of letters on government, under the title of " A defence of 
the Constitutions of the United States of America ;" in which the prin- 
ciples of the anti-democratic party were clearly developed. A few ex- 
tracts will suffice. In his preface he says — " The rich, the well born, 
and the able, acquire an influence among the people, that will soon be 
too much for simple honesty and plain sense in a house of representa- 
tives. The most illustrious of these must, therefore, be separated from 
the mass and placed by themselves in a senate." 

In his 2Uth letter he says: " 1 only contend that the English constitu- 
tion is in theory, the most stupendous fabric of human invention, both 
for the adjucjtment of the balance and the prevention of its vibrations ; 



10 

Now, although the persons who then fornned the Democratic 
party, as well as those of whom the Federal party were made 

and that the Americans ought to be applauded instead of censured, for imi- 
tating it as far as they have." 

In his 26lh letter he says : " If there is then in society such a natural 
aristocracy as these great writers pretend, and as all history and experi- 
ence demonstrate, forined partly by genius, partly by birth, and partly by 
riches, how shall the legislator avail himself of their iniiutnre for the equal 
benefit of the public? And how, on the other hand, shall lie prevent 
them from disturbing the public happiness? I answer by arranging them 
all, or at least the most conspicuous of them together in one assembly, 
by the name of a Senate; by separating them from all pretensions to the 
executive power ; and by controlling, in the legislature, their ambition 
and avarice, by an assembly of representatives on one side, and by the 
executive authority on the other." 

In his 27th letter he says: " If I should undertake to say, that there 
never was a good government in the world, that did not consist of the 
three species, of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, I think 1 may make 
it good." 

In his 29th letter he says : " I shall show in another place, that a no- 
bility or gentry, in a popular government, not overbalancing it, is the 
very life and soul of it." 

In his 32d letter he says: " The only remedy is, to throw the rich and 
the proud into one group, in a separate assembly, and there tie their 
hands; if you give them scope with the people at large, or their repre- 
sentatives, they will destroy all equality and liberty, with the consent and 
acclamation of the people theniselves." 

In letter 52, he says : " The distinctiojis of poor and rich are as neces- 
sary in states of considerable extent, as labor aud good government. The 
poor are destined to labor; and the rich, by the advantages of educatioUf 
independence and leisure, are qualified for snperior stations." 

Again: " When the three natural orders in society, the high, the middle, 
and the low, are all represented in the government and constitutionally 
placed to watch each other, and restrain each other mutually by the laws, 
it is then only that an emulation takes place for the public good, and 
divisions turn to the advantage of the nation." 

The whole work is interspersed with sentiments of a similar nature, 
clearly showing the author's opinion, that the people are incapable of self 
government, and that the only good system is a king, lords, and com- 
mons, representing three distinct orders in society. 

The same distrust of the people was evinced, and the same opinions 
as to government, were expressed in the convention of 1787, which form- 
ed the present constitution of the United States. Mr. Madison, in his 
introduction to the debates in that body, recently published, among the 
circumstances attending its meeting, mentions the following: 

" It was found moreover, that those least partial to popular government, 
or most distrustful of its efficacy were yielding to anticipations that from 
an increase of the confusion, a government might result more congenial 
with their taste or their opinions; whilst those most devoted to the prin- 
ciples and forms of republics, were alarmed for the cause of liberty itself, 
at stake in the American experiment, and anxious for a system that would 
avoid the inefficacy of a mere confederacy without passing into ihe oppo- 
site extreme of a consolidated government. It was known that there were 



11 

up, have passed from the stage of action, and another genera- 
tion come on, and the places of the former taken by new bands 

individuals who had betrayed a bias towards monarchy, and there had al- 
ways been some not unfavorable to the partition of the Union into seve- 
ral confederacies, either from a l)etter change of figuring on a sectional 
theatre, or that the sections would require stronger governments, or by 
their hostile conflicts lead to a monarchical consolidation." 

The succeeding debates contain abundant evidences that the principles of 
John Adams had their advocates among the ablest men in the convention. 

Mr. Hamilton said: (Madison Papers, pages o85. G, 7, 8, 9,) ''In his 
private opinion he had no scruple in declaring, supported as he was, by 
the opinion of so many of the wise and good, that the British government 
was the best in the world; and he doubted much whether any thing short 
of it would do in America." 

Again: " The progress of the public mind led him to anticipate the time 
when others as well as himself would join in the praise bestowed by Mr. 
Neckar on the British constitution, namely, that it is the only govern- 
ment in the world which unites puljlic strength with individual security." 

Again: " Their House of Lords is a most noble institution." " No tem- 
porary senate will have firmness enough to answer the purpose." 

Again: " As to the Executive, it seemed to be admitted that no good 
one could be established on re|)ublican principles. Was not this giving 
up the merits of the question; for can there be a good government with" 
out a pood executive ! The English model was the only good one on 
that subject." 

Again: " What is the inference from all these observations ? That we 
ought to go as far as republican principles will admit. Let one branch 
of the legislature hold their places for life, or at least during good beha- 
vior. Let the executive also be for life." 

He submitted his plan to the convention, avowing, however, that he 
did not expect the people to adopt it ''at present." "But he sees the 
Union dissolving or already dissolved — he sees evils operating in the 
states which must soon cure the people of their fondness for democracies 
— he sees that a great progress Ins been already made, and is still going 
on in the public mind. He thinks, therefore, the people will in time be 
unshackled from their prejudices," &;c. 

His plan was an assembly elected by the people, a senate elected by 
electors chosen by the people in districts, to hold their olTices during good 
behaviour, and a governor elected by electors chosen by the people in 
the senatorial districts, to hold during good behavior; and that the gover- 
nors of the states should be appointed by the general governor, with aT, 
absolute negative on acts passed by the state legislatures. 

Governeur Morris, speaking of the second branch in the executive de 
partment, or the senate, (pages 1018-19-20,) says: 

" One interest must be opposed to another interest; vices as they ex 
ist, must be turned against eacli other. In the second place, it must 
have the aristocratic spirit; it must love to lord it througii pride." "if 
the second branch is to be dependent, we are better without it. To make 
it independent, it should be for life. It will then do wrong, it will be 
said. He believed so; he hoped so. The rich will strive to establish 
their dominion and enslave the rest. They always did. They always 
will. The proper security against them, is to form them into a separate 
interest." 



12 

of politicians ; and although the parties, during the last forty 
years, have gone through a number of changes and formations, 
the principles of the two parties are found to have remained en- 
tire, and they are now fallen back upon their original positions. 

The democracy of our country, as a party, is the same now it 
was in 1798, and the aristocratic party, who were then known 
as federalists, and now as British Whigs, occupy the very same 
ground they did when they were first signally defeated by the 
democracy of the country ; and so much in unison are the prin- 
ciples of this aristocratic part of our people with those of the 
aristocracy of Great Britain, they seem as of one and the same 
family. The British Whigs who have put General Harrison in 
nomination for the Presidency, are the ovvn blood relations and 
cousin-germans to the British Whigs who sustain Lord Mel- 
bourne and his associates. The one party is the representative 
of the wealth of the British nation — the other is the representa- 
tive of the same wealth, and the wealth and moneyed aristocracy 
of our own country. 

In England the British Whigs have chosen a monarch, who 
is stamped by nature with that distinctive weakness, v^hich even 
in their own dominions, deprives her from any participation or 
trust in the execution of their laws, or the administration of the 
government, save the office of tool, which she now performs to 
the aristocracy. In this country the British Whigs have put in 
nomination a candidate for the presidency, who is known to be 
in the imbecility of age ; and who, when he was in the proudest 
days of manhood, had not confidence in his own capacity to hold 
his place in a high and exalted station — but relinquished it, while 
it offered him honor, and fame, and glory, fearful he should sink 
with disgrace under the responsibility by which the station was 

Again: " He contended that the executive should appoint the senate, 
and till up vacancies." 

Again: " He did not hesitate to say, that loaves and fishes must bribe 
the demagogues. They must be made to expect higher offices under the 
general than under the state governments. A senate for life will be a 
noble bait." 

Again: (page 1030,) " State attachments, and state importance, have 
been the bane of this country, We cannot annihilate, but we may per- 
haps take out the teeth of the serpents." 

Again: (page 1033,) On the proposition for fixing the representation in 
the first branch, at " one member for every forty thousand inhabitants," 
lie thought property ought to be taken into the estimate, as well as the 
number of inhabitants. Life and liberty were generally said to be of more 
value than property. An accurate view of the matter would, neverthe- 
less, prove that property was the main object of society." 

Again: (page 1043,) "As to the alarm sounded, of an aristocracy, his 
creed was that there never was nor ever will be a civilized society with- 
out an aristocracy. His endeavor was, to keep it as much as poBsible 
from doing mischief." 



13 

accompanied. The only qualities they claim for him are nega- 
tive — and the only ground he offers for their liking is his suppii- 
ancy — and the certainty, if elected, that he will be as subservi- 
ent to the British Whigs of this country as the British Queen is 
to the aristocracy in England. 

In opposition to General Harrison, the democracy of our 
country offer Martin Van Buren as a candidate for a re-election 
to the Presidency. He is selected from among our Iree citizens, 
because he is known to possess capacity of the highest order, 
and principles corresponding with those of the democratic party; 
while the candidate of the British Whig party is allowed to pos- 
sess no principles of his own, as he is, (if elected,) to he made to 
represent the principles of the party — which they dare not now 
avow. 

As they have their candidate's assent to be made to represent 
the principles of the British Whig party, it is not essential to 
them that he holds opinions in common with the aristocracy. 
Their only object at this time is to get into power ; the princi- 
ples by which the president, of their choice, is to be governed, 
is but a secondary consideration, according to their scheme, to 
be settled in convention, after they have succeeded in his elec- 
tion — which they hope to do by keeping him entirely from the 
observation of the people, surrounded by a committee(4.) who 

(4.) " O^>ego, Jan. 31, 1840. 

" To THE Hon. William H. Harrison: 

" Dear Sir: In accordance with a resolution of tho Union iflssociation 
of Oswego, I am instructed to propose three questions to you in relation 
to subjects that a large portion of this section of the country feel a deep 
interest in. The first is — . . 

" Are you in favor of receiving and referring petitions for the immedi- 
ate abohtion of slavery in the District of Columbia ? 

" Second— Are you'in favor of an United States Bank, or some institu- 
tion similar to that, for the safe keeping and tlisbursing of the public mo- 
neys, and for giving an uniform currency throughout the United States. 

'' And lastly— Would you favor the passage of a general bankrupt law 
by Congress, so that its operations might be equal in all the States in the 
Union. 

" I have only to say, sir, that the above enquiries are made in accord- 
ance with the unanimous wishes of this Association, the members of 
which, 1 am instructed to say, entertain the highest regard for your past 
services, and hope, should you be elected to the high office for which you 
are nominated, that nothing may occur to lessen you in the estimation of 
a great and free people. I am sir, respectfully, your ob't servant, 

"MILES HOTCHKISS, Corresponding Secretary." 

" Cincinnati, Feb. 29, 1840. 
" Oswego Union Association: 

" Gentlemen: Your letter of the 31st ult. addressed to Gen. Harrison, 
has been placed in our possession with a view to early attention. This 



14 

act in the capacity of the attaches of a British Jord — or the la- 
dies of the bed-chamber to Her Majesty — while their mercenary 
prints patch him up on one side as a general and a hero, and on 
the other as a farmer, and the poor man's friend. (5.) 

is unavoidable, in consequence of the very numerous letters daily recei- 
ved by the General, and to which his reply, in person, is rendered abso- 
lutely impracticable. As from his confidential committee, you will look 
upon this response, and if the policy observed by the committee should 
not meet with your approbation, you will attribute the error rather to 
ourselves and his immediate advisers, than General Harrison. That po- 
licy is, THAT THE GENERAL MAKE NO FURTHER DECLARA- 
TION OF HIS PRINCIPLES, FOR THE PUBLIC EYE. WHILST 
OCCUPYING HIS PRESENT POSITION. Such a course has been 
adopted, not for purpose of concealment, nor to avoid all proper responsi- 
bility; but under the impression that the General's views, in regard to 
all the important and exciting questions of the day, have heretofore been 
given to the public, fully and explicitly; and that those views, whether 
connected with constitutional or other questions of very general interest, 
have undergone no change. The committee are strengthened in regard 
to the propriety of this policy; that no new issue be made to the public, from 
the consideration that the National Convejition deemed it impolitic, at the then 
crisis, to publish any general declaration of the views of the great Opposition 
party, a.nd certainly the policy at the present remains unaltered. In the 
mean time, we cannot help expressing the hope that our friends every 
where will receive the nomination of General Harrison with something 
akin to generous confidence. When we reflect upon the distinguished 
intelligence of the nominating convention — how ably all interests were 
represented in that body, we certainly have a high guarantee that should 
General Harrison be the successful candidate for the Presidency, that of- 
fice will be happily and constitutionally administered, and under the gui- 
dance of the same principles which directed our Washington, Jefferson, 
and Madison. Believing you will concur with us in the propriety of the 
policy adopted, we have pleasure in subscribing ourselves, 

" Your friends, '' DAVID G WYNNE, 

"J. C. WRIGHT, 
"O. M. SPENCER. 
''H. E. Spencer, Corresponding Secretary." 

(5.) General Harrison while Governor of the Territory of Indiana ap- 
proved of a law of which the following is an extract: 
A Law to Regulate Elections. 

Se-c. 3, last clause, (the first clause is concerning the oath of judges of 
elections.) 

*' It is therefore enacted, that every free male inhabitant of the age of 
twenty-one years; resident in the Territory, and who has been a citizen 
of any State in the Union, or who hath been two years resident in the 
Territory, and holds a freehold in fifty acres of land within any county of 
the same, or any less quantity in the county in which he shall reside, 
which, with the improvements made thereon, shall be of the value of 
one hundred dollars, or who has paid for, and in virtue of a deed of cov- 
enant for further assurances from a person vested with the fee, is in ac- 
tual possesion of fifty acres of land, subject to taxation in the county in 
which he shall be resident, shall be and are hereby declared to be duly 



15 

T mu-^t take the occasion to remark, that their candidate may 
be a hero and a great general.(6.) Yet, it is shown by the histo- 



qualified electors of Representatives for the counties in which they are 
respectively resident. 

Ji^^SSb: B. THOMAS, Speaker of the House of Representatives. 

B. CHAMftERS, President of ihe Council. 
Approved, I7th Sept. 1807. WM. HENRY HARRISON. 

Indiana, to wit: — I, William J. Brown, Secretary of State, for the 
State aforesaid, do hereby certify that the foregoing is a true copy of the 
last clause of the third section of "A law to regulate elections," which 
is now on file, in manuscript form, in my office. 

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and have affixed 
[l. s.l the seal of said State, at Indianapolis, this 5th day of June, A. D. 
1840. VVM. J. BROWN, Secretary of State. 

(6.) It appears that the ladies of Chillicothe so estimated his (General 
Harrison's) services, that at the same time their husbands prepared a 
sword for Col. Croghan, they prepared for him a petticoat. 

Dayton, April 20, 1836. 

Mr. Bilger — In compliance with your request, I submit to the public 
a true statement, (as far as I am acquainted with the circumstance,) in 
relation to certain ladies of Chillicothe having prepared a PETTICOAT 
TO PRESENT TO GEN. HARRISON at the time the sword was pre- 
sented to the gallant Col. Croghan. 

I arrived at Chillicothe, some lime in the fall or winter of 1814, and 
distinctly and clearly recollect that the subject of the Petticoat, at that 
time, was all the town talk. The father and mother of my wife, Mr. 
John Munday, now dead, informed me of the whole transactions; I also 
heard the particulars from Mrs. Stephen Sissna, now old and blind, and 
who resides in Highland county. I'hese persons were old settlers of 
Chillicothe. Mr. Munday, who had seen the petticoat, informed me 
that it was of" many colors," and so stiffly quilted that it would nearly 
stand alone. Mr. James Foster, with whom I was employed for some 
length of time as a book binder, had also seen the petticoat, and one day 
when we were engaged stitching a pamphlet in relation to the surrender 
of Gen. Hull, he remarked to me that he wished he had a print of a pet- 
ticoat, and that if he had it, he would put it in a frame so as to preserve 
it. At Dr. Basey's tavern, where I then boarded, it was common talk 
almost every day; the names of the ladies were mentioned, and I believe 
I now am able to give the names, if requested, of most of them. I men- 
tion these facts to show that they are of such a character that I could not 
forget or mistake them. In all the conversations I ever heard upon the 
subject, I never heard it denied whilst I resided in Chillicothe, but I do 
recollect of hearing one, if not more of the ladies' husband's say, that the 
petticoat would have been presented to the General, had they not inter- 
fered. There are many citizens of Chillicothe who recollect the facts I 
have stated. There is one gentleman in the Ohio Delegation in Congress 
who, I am well persuaded remembers the circumstance well. That the 
ladies prepared and intended presenting the petticoat, is as undoubted a 
fact, as that the sword was presented to Col. Croghan. If any particular 
reference to the old citizens of Chillicothe, will be of any service, I will 
freely give the same. Respectfully yours, JOHN ANDERSON. 



16 

rical records of our nation, that he resigned his office as a gene- 
ral while our country was in the midst of a war ; and that when 
the Indian war-whoop was resounding along our borders from 
Lake Michigan to the Ri^er St. Johns — when the homes 
of our frontier settlers were smoking in ruins, and our soil was 
being dyed with the blood of our best citizens — and when Bri- 
tish ships were hovering on our coast, blockading our ports, and 
landing their murderous band? of soldiers upon every defence- 
less spot, destroying our peaceful inhabitants, and despoiling our 
country, he abandoned us and left us to fight out our battles and 
to defend our country without his assistance. 1 would also re- 
mark, that General Harrison may be q. farmer. But, neverthe- 
less, it is known that he has preferred the subservient employ- 
ment of a clerk in a petty court of law, to the more honorable, 
though, perhaps, more laborious and hardy occupation of plough- 
ing and planting ; and that he may be the poor man's friend — 
but this must be doubted, from the fact that he approved of a law 
in Indiana, and afterwards voted for a similar one in the Ohio le- 
gislature, providing that the poor man who could not pay his 
fine and cost of suit, on a conviction for a misdemeanor, should 
be sold as a slave to the highest bidder,(7.) and subjected to the 

(7.) Extract from the Territorial Laws of Indiana, lie vised Code, 
1807, page 39 and 40— Section 11, 30 and 31. 

"An Act Respecting Crimes and Punishments. 

" Section 11. If any person shall unlawfully assault or threaten another 
in any menacing manner, or shall strike or wound another, he shall, upon 
conviction thereof, be fined in a sum not exceeding one hundred dollars; 
and the court before whom such conviction shall be had, may, in their 
discretion, cause the offender to enter into recognizance with surety for 
the peace and good behaviour, for a term not exceeding one year. 

"Sec. 30. When any person or persons shall, on conviction of any 
crime or breach of any penal law, be sentenced to pay a fine or fines, with 
or without the costs of prosecution, it shall and may be lawful for the 
court, before whom such conviction shall be had, to order the sheriff to 
sell or hire the person or persons so convicted, to service to any person 
or persons who will pay the said fine and costs for such term of time as 
the said court shall judge reasonable; and if such person or persons so 
sentenced and hired, or sold, shall abscond from the service of his or her 
master or mistress before the term of such servitude shall be expired, he 
or she so absconding shall, on conviction before a justice of the peace, be 
whipped with thirty-nine stripes, and shall, moreover, serve two days 
for every one so lost. 

" Sec. 31. The judges of the several courts of record in this Territorj' 
shall give this act in charge to the grand jury at each and every court in 
which a grand jury shall be sworn." 

JESSE B. THOMAS, Speaker of the House of Representatives. 
B. CHAMBERS, President of the Senate. 

Approved, 17th Sept. 1807. WM. HENRY HARRISON. 

Indiana, to wit:— I, William J. Brown, Secretary of State, for the 



17 

lash, while the rich man, (though a rogue of the deepest dye,) 
should be permitted to go free on giving a little from his great 
store of wealth. 

State aforesaid, do hereby certify, that the foregoing is a true copy of the 
11th, 30th, and 31st sections of ' An Act respecting crimes and punish- 
ments," now on file, in manuscript form, in my otHce. 

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and hero affixed 
Tl. s.] the seal of the said State at Indianaproli.s, this 5tli day of June, A. 
D. 1840. WM. J. BROWN, Secretary of State. 

In approving this act, Gen. Harrison showed that he considered liberty 
and property equal in consideration. The rich man's money, and the 
poor man's liberty, were balanced against each other. The rich man 
might pay the penalty with his money and go free; but the poor man's 
liberty must be taken to pay it. Gen. Harrison's act considers money 
and liberty of the same value ! ! 

Extract from the Journal of the Senate of Ohio. 

" Tuesday, January 30, 1821.— Senate met pursuant to adjournment. 

" The Senate then, according to the order of the day, resolved itself 
into a committee of the whole, upon the bill from the House, entitled 
" An Act for the punishment of certain offences therein named." and af- 
ter some time spent therein, the speaker, (Allen Trimble,) resumed the 
chair. . ^ . , 

" Mr, FiTHiAN then moved to strike out the nineteenth section of said 
bill, as follows: 

" 'Be it further enacted, that when any person shall be imprisoned, 
either upon execution or otherwise, for the non-payment of a fine or costs, 
or both, it shall be lawful for the Sherilf of the county, to sell out such 
persou as a servant to any person within this State, who will pay the 
whole amount due, for the shortest period of service, of which ^«/e, pub- 
lic notice shall be given at least ten days, and upon such sale being effec- 
ted, the Sheriff shall give to the purchaser a certificate thereof, and deli- 
ver over the prisoner to him, from which time the relation between such 
purchaser and the prisoner shall be that of imastkr and servant, until 
the time of service expires; and for injuries done by either, remedy shall 
be had in the same manner, as is, or may be provided by law in the case 
of master and apprentices; but nothing herein contained shall be so con- 
strued as to prevent persons being discharged from imprisonment according 
to the provisions of the thirty-seventh section of this act to which this is 
supplementary, if it shall be considered expedient to grant such discharge: 
Provided, that the Court, in pronouncing sentence upon any person or 
persons convicted under this act or the act to which this is supplementa- 
ry, may direct such person or persons to be detained in prison until the 
fine be paid, or the person or persons otherwise disposed of, agreeably to 
the provisions of this act.' 

" Which motion was decided in the affirmative, yeas 20, nays 12. 

" And the yeas and nays being required, those who voted in the afTir- 
mative were Messrs. Beasly, Brown, Fithian, Gass, Heaton. Jennings, 
Lucas, Mathews, McLaughlin, McMiUin, Newcomb, Robb, Russell, Sco- 
field, Shelby, Spencer, Stone, Swearingen, Thompson, Womcldorf— 20. 

" And those who voted in the negative, were Messrs. Baldwin, Cole, 
Foos, Foster, [WM. H.] HARRISON, McLean, Oswall, Pollock, Rug- 
gles, Roberts, Wheeler and Speaker— 12." 



18 

But to return : While a prisoner to the British government in 
Canada, I was told by one of their nobiiity, a patented legislator, 
" that all my ideas of the establishment of a democratic govern- 
ment in the Canadas were chimerical — that such could not long 
exist where they had been established in my own country — but 
would necessarily be changed into an aristocracy." Then, said 
he, '^the mass of the people of every country must remain igno- 
rant — and it is impossible to have them ever become so enlight- 
ened as to make it safe to allow them to participate in the ad- 
ministration of the government" — and "that some must be made 
permanently great, to keep down the vulgar mass ;" and this ap- 
pears tf be the precise principle of General Harrison and the par- 
ty who have put him up for the suffrages of our people. Do not 
those who control the party, found their hopes of his election up- 
on the supposed ignorance and want of intelligence of the mass 
of our voters'? If it be not so, why have they waived all appeal 
to the good sense of the people, and approached them only with 
devices which are comprehended by their grosser natural, and 
unimproved understanding 3 Or, does their own stupidity induce 
them to believe that they can beguile intelligent and thinking 
people, or any who are worthy to be called democrats, by the 
vulgar song of the bacchanalian — or entice them by the epaulet- 
ted picture of an old and womanish general, impressed on a nap- 
kin — or catch them with coon-skins in log cabins — or purchase 
their votes v/ith hard cider, dealt out to them with a gourd shell? 

This assumed lowliness of the British Whigs, is but a crouch- 
ing of themselves to make a spring for power. If their party 
made any pretentions to democratic principles, and were honest 
in those pretensions, they would scorn such devices as they em- 
ploy, which should be us'ed only among slaves. But they make 
no pretentions to democracy. They are open and avowed aris- 
tocrats—and their devices are used as the instrumentsof a game 
for political power ; and we may be assured that power got by 
such fraudulent means, would be dishonestly held and vilely 
used. 

General Harrison, and his party, are abolitionists (8.) — (mock 

Secretary of State's Office, Columbus Ohio, Sept. 10, 1836. 

I certify that the foregoing is a true and accurate copy from the Jour- 
nals of the State of Ohio, being the first session of the 19th General As- 
sembly, held at Columbus, December, 1826. 

See page 303, 304, 305. CARTER B. HARLAN, Sec. of State. 

(8.) In 1822 General Harrison writes as follows: 

" At the age of eighteen, I BECAME A MEMBER OF AN ABOLI- 
TION SOCIETY, established at Richmond, the object of which was to 
ameliorate the condition of slaves, and procure their freedom by every 
legal means. My venerable friend Judge Gatch, of Clermont co.> waa 



19 

philanthropy) — and so are the aristocracy of Great Britain — who 
are the enslavers of your country, and the common enemies to 
the liberty of mankind. While Ireland is laid prostrate and 
bleeding under their feet — while one hundred and fifty millions 
of Hindoos are trodden to the earth by their merciless bands of 
soldiers, and chainged to a slavery of the vilest kind, they have 
emancipated a few thousand of negroes in the West Indies — 
yet not for so benevolent a purpose as some suppose, but, as I 
was informed by a British officer of rank, while a prisoner in Ca- 
nada, to fit them for military officers, to be inducted into our coun- 
try in case of a war icith us, to raise and arm the slaves of the south 
against us — and to aid in this benevolent scheme, it is boasted 
by the British Whig party, that General Harrison desires an ap- 
propriation of all the surplus revenues of our government. (9.) 

General Harrison and his party are bankers and monopolists. 
They have avowed their intention, if they can get the power of 
our government mto their hands, to create a national bank, to 
whose vaults they will carry the treasures of the government — 
where they shall be controlled by the British aristocracy, who 
will own the stock of the institution. To my notion, the princi- 
ple of banking, as now carried on in our country, and proposed 
to be continued by the British Whig party, is anti-democratic. 
The banks, it is true, throw out upon the people a large amount 
of imaginary money. But what more does this do than to ena- 
ble the rich speculator to increase his already overgrown store, by 
doubling and trebling the price of property, without doing any- 
thing to enhance its volue 1 The mechanic and the laboring 
man is told, however, that by the existence of banks and bank 
bills in our country, they get twice the amount for their services 
which would be given, if they did not exist. This may be true. 
But can they lay up the more 1 1 believe not. For they must 
make a great discount, on every occasion, from the currency 
they receive before it will pay for the necessaries of life, even 

also a member of this society, and has lately given me a certificate that I 
was one. The obligations which I then came under, I have fiithfully 
performed. WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON." 

Read also his letter to William B. Calhoun, in 1840. Here is an extract. 

" While only 18 years of age. in Virginia, I joined an Abolition Society, 
and with others, pledged myself to do every thing in my power to efi'ect 
the emancipation of slaves. I was to inherit a large property in slaves, 
and subsequently not only emancipated my own, but purchased others 
for the purpose of emancipating them. WM. HENRY HARRISON." 

(9.) '' Should I be asked if there is no way by which the general go- 
vernment can aid the cause of emancipation, I answer, that it has long 
been an object near my heart, to see the whole of its surplus ravenueg 
appropriated to that object. WILLIAM H. HARRISON." 



20 

at a double price ; and then, the rent of a shop or dwelhng, is al- 
ways more than treble what it would be in the absence of a 
flood of paper money. So that the speculator, the land holder, 
and the money dealer are the only gainers — while all the produ- 
cing classes are losers. A few banking institutions might be re- 
garded tolerable, as a kind of necessary evil, for commercial pur- 
poses ; but the natural tendency and undeviating course of such 
institutions are to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer — to 
create a broad distance between the condition of a few — very 
rich, and the many — very poor. 

Co-existent with us, as a nation, a party favorable to an aris- 
tocracy — to the existence of different orders in our government, 
was formed — and has been continued in our country. My au- 
thority for the assertion is the record of the times — and with 
this party we have always found the banking interest united. (10.) 
Observation has shown it to be true in the main that whenever 
there has been a new bank created, a new batch of aristocrats 
come forth, equal in number with the persons who constituted its 
board of directors. Though they may have been democrats, 
they could not convert the bank to democracy — but the bank 
has been sure to convert them to aristocracy. 

(10.) Extract from the Address of the Democratic members of the New - 
York Legislature. 
"Hamilton wa^ the leading spirit of the cabinet, (Washington's.) 
More, as to the future character of the government, depended on the or- 
ganization and administration of the treasury department, at that time, 
than on any other department of the government; and Hamilton, true to 
his principles, set about constructing a system which should create an in- 
fluence in congress sufficient to counteract the will of the people and as- 
similate that body to the corrupt parliament of Great Britain. A large 
amount of certificates of public debt for articles furnished during the re- 
volutionary war, was out standing, which had been purchased by specu- 
lators, at half to one-tenth of their nominal amount. Hamilton proposed 
to fund these at par, and a majority being secured for the project, some 
of the members were enabled to make large sums of money, buying them 
up indirectly, before the bill passed. His next project was the assumption 
of the state debts contracted during the revolutionary war, and then much 
depressed, in relation to which much the same game was played. These 
means secured temporarily a majority in congress. But, says Mr. Jeffer- 
son, ' some engine of influence more permanent, must be contrived, while 
these myrmidons were still in place to carry it through all opposition. 
This Engine was the Bank of the United States.' While the gov- 
ernment remained at Philadelphia, a selection of members of both house.? 
were constantly kept as directors, who on every question interesting to 
that institution, or the views of the federal head, voted at the will of that 
head; and together with the stockholding members, could always make 
the federal vote that of a majority. By this combination, legislative ex- 
positions were given to the constitution, and all the administrative lav\\s 
were shaped on the model of England and so passed." 



21 

" Ask me not," says Lavater, " if I am loved 1 Bat for what? 
If I am hated'? But why]" This, sir, forms a proper text for 
an inquiry into the character of the Britisli Whig party. 

Every British aristocrat who lands on our shores, while he 
condemns and rails at our Democratic party, and our democratic 
institutions, is always found to have pockets full of compliments 
and praises for the principles of the British Whig party. Every 
British merchant or speculator resident in our country — be he 
Tory or Whig in England — is a British Whig here. Is not this 
an evidence of an unison of principle 1 Most certainly. The 
British foresee that a continuance of the extended intercourse 
and commercial relations which now exist between the two coun- 
tries, must necessarily result in the formation of two republics 
or two aristocracies. England must become a republic, or the 
United States is changed to an aristocracy like England. A 
war between the two countries, it is true, might defer the result 
for a time — but nevertheless, it must so happen eventually. Then 
is it not natural, and to be expected, that there will be unison of 
feeling — and unison of action between the aristocrats of Ameri- 
ca and Great Britain] 

The fact cannot be unknown to you, that this British Whig 
party, which is made up of the aristocrats known as federalists 
in 1798 — with those who opposed our war with Great Britain in 
1812 — and those who are now clammoring for more banks, ap- 
pear to be terribly alarmed at the thought of a war with Great 
Britain. Think you they fear her power! They do not. 

The well organized bands of Great Britain have been met by 
the undicipHned yeomanry of our country, and defeated — and 
they may be again. Great Britain could never subdue us with 
her sword — and the British Whigs know that fact. There is 
nothing to dread in the power of Great Britain — but we have 
this to fear — she may destroy our democracy by corrupting our 
people with her money and her goods. It is not a fear of the 
power of British arms which occasions the aristocratic part of 
our people to mourn at the mere thought of a war — but they 
fear a war with Great Britain, because it would put far away the 
accomplishment of their desires, and the hope of fixing upon our 
country an aristocratic form of government ! 

Again : It is proposed by the British Whig party, that the ge- 
neral government should assume the debts contracted by the 
different states that have been pursuing a mad career of specu- 
lation, in what has been termed internal improvements — and 
that the public domain should be sold, and the proceeds applied 
to pay off the banks, which are now in the hands of the British ; 
having been bought up with their goods which they have forced 
upon our people, and for which they could not get specie. This 



22 

gives to the Brittsh aristocracy a direct and immediate interest 
in the result of the present contest.(ll.) The democracy of our 

(11.) Extract of a Letter from a London correspondent of a N. Y. paper. 

" London, April 1, 1840, 

" Dear Sir— I cheerfully avail myself of this opportunity to write 
you. I did not receive yours till the 23d ult. * * * * 

" You I know, will be astonished when I inform you that our capital- 
ists are more concerned about the decision of the States in regard to your 
next President, than you are — ^judging from the tenor of your last letter. 
The policy pursued by the Democratic part> of your country, and sus- 
tained by the government at Washington, is alarmingly disadvantageous 
to the rich capitalists of this country — and hence every item of news goes 
to estabhsh an opinion that your President and his ministers are losing 
ground, is received with astonishing avidity; and the general morning 
salute in Thread-and-needle-street is, ' Any thing later from the U. States '/ 
The great question of discussion now is, ' Will the United States persist 
in recommending the Sub-Treasury Law V and this one question, 

" ' Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest.' 

" It is the general opinion here, that if this project is carried out, the 
consequences will be serious to our manufactures, and also to all other 
capitalists. ****** 

" For it is the policy of Great Britain, as all men know, to keep Ame- 
rica, and indeed all other countries in debt to her, that she may make 
them tributary to her, and dependent upon her; and it is a common boast 
here, that the United States, though ' free and independent,' are never- 
theless as much colonies of Great Britain as ever they were; and that 
though they make their own laws, yet Great Britain has something to 
say about that business also; because she has such a vast amount of mo- 
ney in the States tiiat she can always have a party in her interest there, 
strong enough to keep things nearly as she wishes them to be. This 
was a common talk here a while ago, but the Sub-Treasury bill has cau- 
sed tliem ' to waive the conversation' lately, and now^ it is feared that the 
British Government will be beset with such difficulties as will cause the 
throne to totter to its base.' ****** 

" It was thought a while ago, that the plan proposed by Messrs. Baring 
& Co., which received the sanction of the leaders of the Whig party of 
the United States, but was anticipated in your national Senate by the 
Democratic portion thereof, before it could be brought forward by the 
Whig members as a public measure, would be adopted, and that the 
American Government would take upon itself the responsibility of pay 
ing those debts, but now there is no hope. It seems from all we can gath- 
er from the newspapers and letters which we receive, that the U. States 
are determined to cut ofl'all communications with this country; and it is 
said by the knowing ones here, that unless the present administration 
is defeated at the next presidential election, or unless it reverses its policy 
on the currency question, it will lead, not merely to a dangerous crisis^ 
but prove a death-blow to the prosperity of England. 

" Mr. remarked with great emphasis, the other da)^ — and I place 

great confidence in what he says, * that if the candidate of the American 
financiers. Gen. Harrison, was not elected, the great financial system of 
England, might bid farewell, a long farewell, to all its greatness,' and 
that a complete revolution in all our government affairs would follow; as 



23 

country are opposed to the assumption of these state debts by 
the general government, as unconstitutional, and as unjust in its 
effect upon the people — which would be as muc!i so, as to re- 
quire the industrious and discreet man to contribute to pay the 
debts of his profligate neijrhbor. 

With a hope of having the payment of these state bonds, held 
by the British, provided for by our general governmeut, Ihey 
have undertaken to assist in the elevation of (xeneral Harrison, 
and their friends, the British Whig parly; and to acomplish 
this, as I have it on good authority, they arc about to send into 
our country large sums of money, to be used for bribery and bet- 
ting — and otherwise to be expended in the attempt to produce 
an influence with our voters in behalf of their friends here — who 
propose no measures which do not directly favor the withdrawal 
of tlie power of the government from the people. One of 
the leading measures of the British Whig party, is to carry on 
a series of internal improvements in certain of the states at the 
expense of the national treasury. (12.) Now, what could be the 
effect of this measure but consolidation — resulting in a demand 
for an extention and increase of the powers of the generel go- 
vernment, which would thus be made to require strengthening — 
and must necessarily be followed by the surrender of the rights 
of the people to a powerful aristocracy. 

one, though not the least of the effects of the Sub-Treasury law of the 
United Slates. 

" Our papers here, openly declare, that it is necessary for the healthy 
maintenance of our equilibrium, and a perpetuation of monurchy, that 
the Democratic party of America, should be put down; and, though I take 
no part in these questions, yet I am inclined to the same opinion." 

(12.) That General Harrison is in favor of this measure, is clear. In 
the House of Representatives on the 18th of March 1818, when he was a 
member, the following Resolutions were brought up for action, and voted 
for by him. 

"1. That Congress has power under the Constitution, to appropriate 
money for the construction of post roads, military, and other roads, of ca- 
nals, and for the improvement of water courses. 

" On the vote being taken, it was decided in the negative, ayes 60, 
noes 75. {Harrison amongst the ayes.] 

" 2. That Congress has power under the Constitution to construct post 
roads, and military roads, provided, that private property be not taken 
for public use without just compensation. [82 ayes, 84 noes. Harrison 
amongst the ayes.] 

"3. That Congress has power under the Constitution to construct 
roads and canals necessary for commerce between the States, provided 
that private property be not taken for public purposes without just com- 
pensation. [74 ayes, 95 noes, Harrison amongst the ayes. J 

" 4. That Congress has power under the Constitution, to construct ca- 
nals for military purposes, proxided that no private property bo taken for 
any such purpose, without just compensation being made therefor. [81 
ayes, 83 noes, Harrison amongst the ayes.]" 



24 

I would now, sir, inquire, if you are willing to be numbered in 
the ranks of a party, whose principles are thus shown to be anti- 
democratic — or to be found laboring for the interests of the op- 
pressors of your own country, and the enemies of liberty in ours 1 
Do you suppose, sir, that by giving your support to that party, 
you will in any manner contribute to benefit the cause of your 
country, or find favor for your unfortunate people ? If you do, in 
my judgement you greatly err. Do you doubt the influence of 
British gold? Then look at the bell-weather of the aristocracy 
of our country. He is marked with 852,000, the price at which 
he was bought. You may see many others in the party label- 
led with the rate of their purchase ; and have not these all, all, 
been among the first to traduce your people — to oppose the 
cause of your country — and to libel and villify those of our citi- 
zens who have offered to give you assistance in your struggle T 

By assisting to put the government of this country into the 
hands of a party acting upon such principles as are shown to be- 
long to the British Whigs — such principles as are inscribed upon 
their banners — you will not only make yourself an instrument in 
fixing incalculable evil upon this republic, but you will be the 
means of assisting to rivet the chains of the British aristocracy 
upon your own country. 

For the Canadas, I have yet hopes — although their soil is now- 
held by Great Britain with a glittering and panoplied host, which 
I have seen. Yes, I have seen them exhibiting " all the pomp 
and circumstance of war," and moving with "the pride and per- 
fectness of discipline ;" and I have been oppressed with a feel- 
ing of humiliation when I have reflected what discipline can do 
towards the formation of an army. I say humiliation, because, 
the well organized bands of a despot, (like the British troops in 
Canada,) can by skilful dispositions and unity of effort, always 
defeat numbers, vastly superior, of men animated by the purest 
patriotism that ever warmed or ennobled the heart, but unassis- 
ted by a practical acquintance with war. 

But we have good authority for saying " the battle is not to 
the strong." The best corps of British soldiers sent into Ame- 
rica, have been defeated by Patriots, half armed and but indiffe- 
rently organized. Tlie host of the Sennacherib prevailed not 
against Jerusalem ; and the almost countless numbers led into 
Greece by the despot of Persia, were routed on the plains of 
Marathon. The chosen bands of Great Britain were met at Sa- 
ratoga by the yeomanry of America, who were uninstructed in 
the art of war, and they were conquered — and may nat the yeo- 
manry of the Canadas do as much T That they will, is to be ex- 
pected ; and that they must finally succeed in bursting the gal- 
ling bands of political slavery, cannot be doubted : 



25 

** For freedom's battle once begun, 
,, Sent down from bleeding sire to son, 

Though often lost, is ever won." 
If it be excepted by you, that the course of the present admin- 
istration of our government has been against the interests of 
your country — I answer that we have treaty stipulations with 
Great Britain which it is proper for our government to preserve 
until it is agreed by the whole nation, that they shall be disre- 
garded ; aiid if you charge any officer of our government with 
having taken steps against your people, and those of our citizens 
who desired to give you aid, which was uncalled for by our trea- 
ty obligations, you will understand that there was no approval 
given for those acts by the democratic part of our people — that 
plaudits for those acts alone came from the British Whig party, 
whose organs in this country, sung praises in tenor and treble, 
while they were responded to in base by the Toronto Patriot and 
the Montreal Herald. 

Be not deceived ! The cause of your country can never find 
support with the British Whigs of this. Be not disheartened ! 
But let the proper time come, and come it will, for the people of 
the Canadas to make the effort for a political existence, and they 
will tlien find themselves liberally succored and assisted by the 
democracy of America. We have hearts enough willing and 
hands ready. The cause, is not the cause of your country alone 
— but of ours and of all mankind. It is the cause of free govern- 
ment, of religion, and of God. 

I have written this letter as an appeal to your good sense ; 
and for the purpose of bringing before your mind some of the 
features of the British Whig party of this country, which may 
possibly have escaped your attention : and I would have you be 
assured that I have done so with no other feelings towards you, 
than those of respect and esteem. My only desire is to be in- 
strumental in the extension of free democratic institutions to all 
the people, and to every part of the American Continent — and so 
far as in me lies, to assist in maintaining them, unimpaired, in 
the land of my birth, where they have been bestowed, and where 
my forefathers assisted in establishing the first altar of Liberty. 
Sir, I am, 

Very respectfully, 

Your obedient servant, 

Tli: J. SUTHERLAND. 



LETTER No. II. 



New. York, June 15, 1840. 

To Dr. WoLFRED Nelson, 

Late of Lower Canada^ now of Plaitshurgh, N. Y. : 

Dear Sir — The deep solicitude I feel that the democratic in- 
stitutions of this country, the land of my birth, should be perpe- 
tuated and preserved, unimpaired, and be handed down from 
this generation to the next, as they were given to us by our fore- 
fathers — with the hope, which I entertain, soon to see the bene- 
fits of similar institutions extended to the people of the Canadas^ 
has prompted me to address you once more on a subject which I 
deem of the highest moment at this time, to every lover of liber- 
ty and the equal rights of man. 

It cannot be doubted that so long as Great Britain rests her 
spreading and inordinate dimensions upon her conquests, and 
her colonies — just so long the people of that nation will be made 
to submit to the sway and government of a moneyed aristocracy j 
and whether they, who exercise the government, are called 
Whigs or Tories, they will be aristocrats — or call them if you 
please. Radicals or Reformers, they will be aristocrats still, with 
all their usual charateristics of — cash and corruption. As in 
Great Britain the moneyed power and the government is in firm 
alliance to oppose the people, and thereby to sustain the power of 
the one and the wealth of the other — so whatever influence the 
British aristocrats may have with the citizens of this republic, 
you will find it in all cases operating against the principles of 
democracy, and openly opposing every measure w-hich may seem 
to be calculated to favor the establishment of democratic insti- 
tutions in the Canadas. 

When the great charter of our rights was adopted in this 
country by our patriot sires — when our political freedom was es- 
tablished, and our independence was acknowledged, the enemies 
of civil liberty and equal rights were not made friends to free 
institutions. The British aristocracy are as little in love with 
our democratic form of government at this time, as they were 
at the moment they were struggling to put down and to smother 
the spirit of patriotism and of liberty which burst forth at Lex- 



27 

ipsgton and Bunker Hill : and may not the British aristocrats 
reasonably be supposed as ready now to destroy the democracy 
of our country as they were then to oppose its eslablishuienti 
British influence is as deadly hostile, at this time, to the exis- 
tence of democratic institutions in America as were their mer- 
cenary bands of soldiers who were brought against our fore- 
fathers during their revolutionary struggle by their Gages, their 
Howes, their Tarletons, their Rawdons, and their Burgoynes and 
Cornwallises, and require as much vigilance on our part to be 
resisted. 

The influence which the British aristocracy may have in this 
country almost entirely depends upon the state of the commercial 
intercourse between the two countries. This intercourse has 
been for a series of years past decidedly to the advantage of the 
British, and to the injury and almost to the ruination of our coun- 
try. Therefore, any measure of our government wliich may 
tend to deprive the British of this advantage in trade, will not 
only confer pecuniary benefits on our people, but it will prove 
alike a measure for sustaining and extending the principles and 
institutions of democracy. 

By reviewing the records of the commercial intercourse ba- 
the United States and Great Britain, we shall find that there 
has been, for many years, an annual importation of British ma- 
nufactures into this country, amounting in value to more than 
^90,000,000, while the exportations from the United States to 
to that country amount in value to barely $60,000,000. Hence 
it appears the British have an advantage in their trade with us, 
annually, to the amount of ^30,000,000 ; and from this has come 
the result that our country is drained of specie — our people are in 
debt — our manufacturers are ruined — aiid British, goods have taken 
the place of those of every kind, which should have been produced by 
our own hands — and thus it is, our people walk upon British car- 
pets, sleep under British blankets, eat upon British porcelain 
with British knives and forks, drink their wine, (" gin-cocktails" 
or ^'- hard-cider V^) from British cut glass, and parade their per- 
sons in the streets and public places, shining in British cloths 
and British finery ; and while it so exists we may rest assured 
that our people, more or less, will imbibe British principles, which 
will have the .effect to array them against any measures for the li- 
beration of your country, in which you might desire aid and as- 
sistance from us. 

To counteract these evils is one of the prominent measures of 
the Democratic party. To perpetuate them would be the result 
of the measures proposed and advocated by the British whigs 
of this country. 

A prominent measure of the party who have put General Har- 



28 

rison in nomination for the Presidency, is a high tariff, which 
they advocate as a protection to the American manufacturer. 
But a more idle scheme for the purposes of protection, could not 
possibly be conceived by wise and learned statesmen. Allow 
Great Britain to have gold and silver for a circulating medium in 
her own country, while we have a paper currency, zchicJi shepre- 
scribesfor us, and no duties that we could impose on her manu- 
factures would exclude them from our country, or protect our 
own in the least. For whatever may be exacted on British 
goods, in the way ot duties, would come out of the pockets of 
the consumer in this country, if the present policy of our com- 
mercial intercourse be continued — which is thus : 

Of her manufactures, Great Britain exports to the United 
States, to the value of 890,000,000 annually. For ^60,000,000 
of this amount, she takes her pay in the produce of our country, 
leaving $30,000,000 to be paid in bullion, or otherwise. Now, 
we have no mines by the coinage from which we are able to af- 
ford an annual cimount of thirty miUions of dollars to pay for Bri- 
tish goods — which our people do not want. But, after taking 
from our country all the specie they can glean, to make up for 
the deficit, the British take the stocks of our nine hundred banks, 
which they have, by their friends and agents in the United States, 
procured to be created for the express purpose of paying them- 
selves for their own manufactures ; and whenever bank stock has 
failed to be procured in quantities sufficient for the purpose, state 
bonds have been made to meet the demand ; in the creation of 
which the British have been no less indirectly concerned. We 
have imposed duties on their goods, and the consumers have 
paid it, and British manufactures have continued to flood the 
country — while new creations of bank stock, and an increase of 
bank bills, with the consequent rise in the price of labor and of 
every kind of property, has enabled the British manufacturer to 
obtain undiminished prices for his fabrics. Nor have the British 
been compelled even to afford the amount of the duties imposed 
on their goods from the specie which their agents have gathered 
in our country, for while they have lugged the gold and silver 
from our shores, they have been permitted to pay the duties in 
worthless bank paper, on which there were but promises to pay 
— that which the institutions had not in their vaults to give. 

What has most facilitated the British in palming their manu- 
factures upon us, is the disposition which has been made of the 
duties when paid in. These moneys have been put into the 
possession of the banks, and this has enabled them to double their 
issues, and thus to expand the currency, and blow up the bub- 
ble of speculation, while the British have poured into our coun- 
try their manufactures with good round profits ; making the ta- 



29 

riff, which was said to have been put on for the purpose of their 
obstruction, afford the very means of bringing their goods into 
the country at an increased advantage ; and such is the condi- 
tion of tlie commercial intercourse between the two countries 
which it is the avowed pohcy of the British Whig party in the 
United States to continue. (1.) 

These operations, so ruinous in their effect, not only upon the 
currency and business of the country, but upon our political and 
social condition, are now, however, in part frustrated and bro- 
ken up. The public treasures of the nation have been with- 
drawn from the United States Bank, (an institution most deadly 
hostile in its character to the principles of free government, 
which is now wasting, slowly, what is left of its once bloated, 
but now poor, lean and shrunken form, that will soon pass, "un- 
honored and unsung;") and by a recent enactment of our Con- 
gress they are no longer to be given to the keeping of irrespon- 
sible bankers ; but the moneys hereafter collected from the peo- 
ple for the support of government are to be kept in the hands of 
the people's servants, to be paid out and used only for the purpo- 
ses for which they are levied ; and the duties on British ana 

(1.) Extract from a letter received very recently, by a coraracrcial gen- 
tleman in New-York, from another in England. 

" Manchester, England, July 22, 1840. 

" Oiir business continues extremely dull— and I see little prospect of 
immediate improvement. Our market with America, is in a measure cut 
off, and if your Wobocratic or Democratic, (as it is called) Administration, 
succeed in carrying out their vile measures of reforming the currency, we 
may expect to lose our foothold in the United States, almost entirely. 

" I see your papers speak with much confidence of the succoss of Gen. 
Harrison to the Presidency office. I don't know who he is, but hope he 
may be elected, for if the Aristocraci/ in America do not succeed now, 
they may expect to be ruled by the farming and laboring classes forever. 
I know very w ell that your currency has been as bad as any thing could 
well be, for yonr country, and was well calculated to inflate prices to an 
unnatural extent, but you see, as long as that was the case, you could 
send no produce or manufactures abroad, because prices were lower every 
where else, than they were vvitb you. and WE could supply all other 
markets, and send any amount to your country, and undersell you in ev- 
ery thing and take back gold in return, which is not wanted as long as 
your banks can create a paper currency of their own; so you see all your 
banking interests are benefited, your aristocracy and rich men receive 
great dividends, the laboring classes, as long as they can get enough to 
eat and drink ought to be satisfied, while we have tlie entire control of 
your vast country; but let that demagogue Martin Van Buren succeed, 
the banks lose their immense power, the rich and high born will lose their 
proper influence, by giving a more equal chance to the low herd; ybur 
produce growers and manufacturers w ill be able to beard US in our own 
den, while the market that we have had in your country, we shall be cu^ 
entirely ofi'from." 



30 

other foreign manufactures are hereafter to be paid in gold and 
silver, the legal currency of our country ; and bank bills, there- 
fore, will no longer afford a passport for British goods to the Uni- 
ted States. 

This, sir, is regarded, by every true democrat, as the begin- 
ning of aglnrious reform; and if the triumph of the Democratic 
party, who have thus commenced it, at the coming election, shall 
allow them to carry it out, happy indeod will it be for this coun- 
try ; and, then, if British agents here are allowed to create no 
more bank stock, or state bonds — our currency will at least ac- 
quire a broader specie basis — no more of British manufactures 
will be sent into our country than our own products will be ac- 
cepfed for in payment — and then our own manufacturers may 
create their fabrics, and sell them for a profit, in defiance of the 
competition of the British with their pauper labor — and they will 
find that protection for their own manufactures in the "specie 
system" which the " American system," cr '* high tariff system" 
could not give ; and in the end our country will be rid of British 
goods and British influences. 

On the other hand, should the British Whig party succeed in 
placmg themselves in power by means of the deceptions they are 
now practising upon the people, what evils to our country may 
we not expect. Pandora's box will then be opened ! Our 
country wiil continue to be flooded with British manufactures, 
and American manufactories will be closed. Gold and silver 
will no longer form even a part of our circulating medium — the 
specie here will be carried off and its place supplied by a flood 
of paper money, which will per\ ade the country and the whirl- 
wind of speculation will continue to rage. Another national 
bank will be created, into the gorging stomach of which will be 
thrown the money of the people. Its stock passes, either directly 
or indirectly into the hands of British capitalists — and it becomes 
allied to the great central moneyed power in London — and Great 
Britain through this medium will then as effectually control the 
business and destinies of this country as she would if we were 
again colonies of her crown. Let this but happen and you and 
your friends may cease talking of a revolution in the Canadas. 
The difference of the condition of your country, and what ours 
would be then, would not be worth fighting for! While you 
would be left without a hope for your country, we should have re- 
maining but the privilege of contemplating what we might have 
been, if we had not suffered our glorious inheritance, which was 
bequeathed to us by our forefathers, and which cost them such 
a vast amount of toil, of suffering, of blood and of treasure, bar- 
tered away. 

Should the British Whig party get into power, a high tariffs no 



31 

doubt, will be levied on British manufactures imported into this 
country, under the specious pretext of protecting American man- 
ufactures. But the surplus revenue thereby created would be 
used by the agents of the British themselves to increase the issues of 
bank paper, and consequently to keep up an exorbitant price 
on every species of property — and thus enable the British manu- 
facturers to send still more of their goods into our country— and 
to obtain still better prices. The American manufacturers would 
receive no protection whatever, but on the contrary be for- 
bid to attempt a competition with the British manufacturers 
—for although they might be enabled to get a greater price for 
their fabrics, than they could if it were otherwise, yet the m- 
creased price of labor and of the articles which they must neces- 
sarily consume, would throw the advantage entirely on the side 
of the British manufacturers with their pauper laborers ; and the 
only gainers by this in our country would be the rich bank spe- 
culator—while all the laboring classes, who are the principal 
consumers, would be greatly the losers. 

From the moment of the commencement of our revolutionary 
struggle up to the present date, the British government has had 
its friends among the people of this country ; and since the days 
of our republican forefathers, there has grown up in our land a 
moneyed aristocracy of great strength, and alien to the interest 
of the laboring class of our fellow-citizens, making every thing 
of the nobility of wealth, and little or nothing of intellectual or 
moral worth ; aiming to control the currency, capital, and trade 
of the country, and boldly aspiring by the most corrupt applian- 
ces, to legislative and governmental control. This power is eve- 
ry where awake ; and it is the ever ready agent of the British 
aristocracy in this country. 

I have now, sir, but to ask, if you are willing to be found giv- 
ing aid to put the power of our government into the hands oi this 
moneyed aristocracy, who are so deadly hostile to liberty and 
equality] That these moneyed aristocrats are so hostile, we 
have from a knowledge of the principles of their leading men — 
from their open opposition to the measures and principles of de- 
mocracy and their adherence to British influence and British 
interest; and from the sentiments of the newspapers they support. 
Sir, I am. 

Very respectfully, 

Your obf'dient servant, 

TH: J. SUTHERLAND. 



LETTER No. 111. 



NeiD^ York, June 25, 1840. 

To Dr. WoLFRED Nelson, 

Late of Lower Canada, now of Plaitsburgh, N. Y. : 

Dear Sir — I penned my letter of the 15th inst. with the view- 
to make that my last communication to you through the public 
prints. But, sir, while looking over the gross frauds which are 
daily and indefatigably being resorted to by the British Whig 
party, (in their present game for power,) to deceive the people 
—and, now, beholding their leaders endeavoring to combine the 
rich, by assuring^ to them the creation of new facilities to in- 
crease their already overgrown store, at the expense of the la- 
boring man — to attach the poor with the devices of log cabins, 
and the promise of high prices for services, and goods at low rate — 
to bring in the religious, by kissing their hands to the church — to 
gather the dissolute, by dealing out to them potations of hard ci- 
der—to entice the young and vain, by bringing ivomen and g-irZs to 
their political meetings, and to participate in their processions 
and spectacles — and to draw the friends of your country to their 
course, by whispering to their ears a hypocritical profession of 
patriotism and love of liberty, in order to procure the united sup- 
port of all these, for the candidate they have put in nomination 
for the office of chief magistrate of these United States — a man 
with nothing but a factitious character — the mere popinjay of 
the party by whom he has been brought forward, I could but feel 
myself justified in addressing you again on a subject to which 
you cannot, at least, be indifferent. 

In the nomination of General Harrison as a candidate for the 
office of President of the United States, by the British Whig 
party, " superior or splendid talents were not considered." So 
says their State Central Committee. « But," say they who have 
put him in nomination, "we can make a glorious rally under his 
banner and reach the hearts of the people by his services.^^ There- 
fore, you will perceive, sir, it is evident that they thought to ob- 
tain for him more consideration for his past services, than for his 
talents and capacity now to serve the people in the office for which 
they propose him. 



33 

According to my understanding there is no citizen of the Uni. 
ted States who can establish for himself claims to cr.e office, by 
any services which he may render his country in another. If 
the people confer upon a citizen an office which he accepts, and 
he performs its duties faithfully, according to the best of his abi- 
lities, he has done no more than was obligatory upon him; and 
when he has received the salary or fees annexed to the of- 
fice, he has got all which he has a right to demand of the people 
in consideration of his services. Our citizens select from among 
themselves, individuals to fill the offices of government on ac- 
count of their supposed capacity to serve them in such offices — 
and they do not give their public offices to any as a reward for 
j)a$l services, however faithfully and efficiently those services may 
have been performed. 

Nevertheless, I would not be understood to say, that when a 
citizen has periled his life in the defence ot hifl country, or oth- 
erwise served it in a faithful and efficient manner, he has not en- 
titled himself to the esteem of his fellow-ciiizens ; and God for- 
bid that 1 should be found laboring to tarnish any honestly ac- 
quired fame, or to destroy the esteem which such person may 
have obtained with the people of this country. But, whenever 
a citizen lays claims to merit, for his services, which is not his 
due, and allows himself to be put up as a candidate for the high- 
est office in the gift of the people, and asks for their suffrages on 
account of his services, then the services o^ such citizen become 
a proper subject for public inquiry, and his claim to honor and 
merit is made a matter for the consideration of the people. 

If the claims of General Harrison for thesuffragesof the Ame- 
rican people, are alone based upon the meril nf his past services, 
(which are only in a rightful manner to be considered as afford- 
ing evidence of his capacity and abilities for future services,) 
then, certainly, the nature and character of his services may be 
inquired into, by any citizen, without being justly subjected to 
the charge of attempting to detract from any m?rit which does 
really belong to him, and if upon a fair examination of those per- 
formances, Tn which General Harrison claims to have rendered 
services to his country, it is shown that he has exhibited a want 
of capacity to perform, efficiently, the duties of any office with 
which he may have been entrusted, however correct his inlen- 
lions might have been, it is a good objection to him now, and a 
sufficient reason why he should not at the coming election receive 
the votes of the people of the United States for the highest office 
within their gift. 

To attempt to form any just opinion of the movements and 
operations of an army, or of the talents and capacity of its com- 
mander, from those accounts which float along upon the public 

3 



34 

voice, and which are picked up and catered, by the condacicrs 
of newspapers, to feed the public curiosity, would be extremely 
idle. Individuals not connected with an arjny, are allowed to 
obtain but very little correct information of its movements and 
operations; and the only information worthy to be relied upon, 
is that which cwnes from persons holding military st8 lions with 
the force — and from the reports of the commanding officer. 
These last constitute, by far, the best and most certain informa- 
tion, upon which to found an estimation of the conduct and cha- 
racter of such officer. 

In the report of the proceedings of the Congress of the United 
States on the 17th day of December, 1811, there appears a copy 
of a letter over the name of General Harrison, bearing date at 
Vincennes, ISlh of Nov. 1811, giving a detailed accoimt of the 
" Battle of the VVabash" or Tippecanoe ; which letter was ad- 
dressed by General Harrison to the Hon. William Eustis, then 
Secretary of War, and was communicated by President Madi- 
son to the House of Ptepresentatives. The letter being thus 
communicated, and appearing with the published proceedings of 
Congress, puts its authenticity beyond a doubt, but if there was 
any thing more wanting to establish its genuineness we have it 
in the declaration of General Harrison himself — "that no honest 
man would suffer his friends to publish documents in his name 
which were not genuine, and V/hich he was not then v;illing to 
endorse." Wherefore, it will be conceded, that this account of 
the Battle of Tippecanoe, may be taken as coming from General 
Harrison himself, and just as it would now be endorsed by him„ 

By referring to the accounts given of tiie occurrences of those 
time's, it appears tliat in the summer and autumn of 1811, the In- 
dian tribes located alonr the borders of our Western Territories 
had assumed attitudes of hostility towards our frontier settlers, 
instigated, as it was supposed, by agents of the British Govern- 
ment, who weP' then even more hostile to our people than the 
savages themselves. "In tlie year 1810," (says the National 
Intelligencer, of September, 1811,) "a Mia-ui Chief having re- 
ceived at Fort Maiden his usual donation of goods, was thus ad- 
dressed by Ellicott, the British Agent : ♦ My son, keep your eyes 
fixed on me — my tomahawk is up — be you ready — but do not 
strike until 1 give you the signal !' and every account,'* (con- 
tinues the Intelligencer,) "we receive from that country confirms 
the belief, that British agents among the Indians excite them 
against us, and furnish them with muskets, powder, ball, provi- 
sions," &c. 

A great hell had then lately been sent around among the diffe- 
rent tribes for the purpose of forming a confederacy of the Indi/- 
ans, ia order, as our government was currently advised* " to 



2§ 

confine the great loaters and prevent it from over/lowing them^'" 
and a chief of the Shavvanesc, the Propliet, had cohected asmall 
ibody of Indian warriors at liis town on the northerly side of the 
Wabash, near the junction of t.-e Tippecanoe with that river, 
<!onsiGtin^^ principally, of the members of his own tribe, but re- 
inforced by a few warriors from the neiohboring tribes, with a 
view, as it was supposed, to make an attack upon the people of 
the frontiers of In<iiana. 

Advised of thcso proceedings on the part of the Indians, the 
President oHJie United iStates issued his or<ler to General Har- 
rison, then Governor of the Territory of Indiawa, directing hira 
to take command of the forces of the United States stationed in 
the territor}', consisting of the fourth re^riment. of infantry, and 
one company of theTth regiment, under tiie command of Colonel 
Boyd, a small det^ichment of drairoons, and a fraction of a compa- 
ny of riflemen, and after reinforcing them with detachments of 
mounted riflemen and Indiana militia, which were ordered out 
Vor tJiat purpose, to march upon the Prophet with such force, and 
to chastise hira for his insdlence, if ho could not awe him into 
subjection. The troops for the expedition having been concen- 
trated at Viiiccnncs, then the scat of government of the territory, 
from thence, or from Fort Harrison, about eixty miles above, Ge- 
neral Harrison took up his line of march, sometime about the be- 
ginning of November. On the second or third day of the same 
month,'' he arrived with his forces at Vermillion river, on the 
.northerly side of the Wabash, where he erected a block house, for 
the protection of his boats, which he was there obliged to leave, 
and as a depository for his heavy baggage and such part of his 
provisions as he v^-as unable to transport in wagons. 

" On tlte fnorning of iho M instant," siiys Goncral Harrison, in his ac- 
^:Ount of the b;iitie of Tippecanoe, " I conimenced my march from the 
iilocic house. The Wabash above this, turning considerably fo the east- 
ward. { was obliged, in order to avoid the broken and woody coverts, 
%vhich border upon it, to change my course westward of north, to gaia 
'•The ptairies vvbich he to the haci< of those woods. At the end of one 
-iay'a march. 1 was enabled to take the proper direction, (N. E.) which 
>)rought ice on the evening of the 5th, to a small creek at about eleven 
miles from the Prophet's town. I had on the preceding day, avoided the 
<]anger«us pass of Pine creek, by inclining a few miles to the left, where 
che troops and wagons were crossed with expedilion and safety. Our 
route on the 6lh, for about six miles, lay through prairies separated by 
f^maJl points of vv«od." 

As the American forces approached tvithin four or five miles 
of the Prophefs town, understanding that the remaining part of 
the route was through an open woo(i, ;ind the probability being 
<rreater that they should be attacked in front than on either flank, 
Cleneral Harrison caused his troops to halt, and formed ihem in 
orda' of bailie^ in manner which he thus describes: 



36 

'* The United States infantry placed in the centre, with two companies of 
nilitia infantr-y, and one of mounted rijiemen on eachjiank, formed the frojii 
line. In the rear of this lute, was placed the baggage, drawn vp as covi- 
pactly as possible, a?id immediately behind it, A reserve of three companies 
offnilitia infantry. The cavalry formed a second line, at the distance of 
three hundred yards in the rear of the front line, and a company of moimted 
riflemen, the advance guard at that distartce in front. To facilitate the 
march, the whole were then broken off into sliort columns of companies, 
a situation more favorable for forming in order of battle with facility and 
precision." 

This order of battle proposed by General Harrison, forms no 
very important item in the matters presented for the estimation 
of his character as a military chieftain, as the formation was put 
to no test by him; and then the propriety of such a disporntion of 
his force to receive an attack, depended more upon the character 
of the troops he commanded, for discipline, than the class or 
corps to which they belonged ; but, if his regulars were in that 
state of dicipline which such troops may be supposed to possess, 
and his militia men were like those we have usually seen, com- 
posed of farmers, mechanics and professional men, assembled 
at the moment from their various avocations of life, and entirely 
ignorant of the art of war, then his 2>roposed order of battle was 
extremely exceptionable. 

" In the formation of my troops," says General Harrison, " I used a 
single rank, or what is termed an Indian file — because in Indian w^arfare, 
■where there is no shock to 7-esist, one rank is nearly as good as two ; 
and in that kind of warfare, the extension of line is matter of the first im- 
portance." 

Assuming this to be correct, there would have been great error 
in his disposing of his whole regular infantry in the front line, 
where, in case of an attack, they would be compelled to do the 
whole of the fighting, though there was no shock to be met which 
should particularly require the regular troops to resist. The his- 
tory of all our wars exhibit the fact that tiie best, and the almost 
only service obtained from recent levies of raw militia in field 
engagements, is at the onset. The militia when once broken, 
are seldom rallied again, and if rallied at all, it is only by the 
greatest exertions; whereas, regular disciplined troops, when 
broken, are, on most occasions, rallied with facility. So, when 
the militia, or those troops upon which the dependence is the 
least, are placed in the front line of the army, if they arc broken, 
none are disappointed ; and the regular force being in the second 
line, and remaining firm to meet the pursuing enemy, produce a 
shock which cannot fail to he greatly felt by the pursuers, if it 
does not overwhelm them. But, if otherwise, the regular, or best 
troops of the army are placed in the front line, and made to be- 
gin the battle, it is difficult afterwards to bring forward any mili- 



37 

^iia foro€ to take a part in the fight. Having stood by to sec 
blood flow for tlie first time, militiamen are not, then, readily 
brought into a battle — and the regulars are left to finish, as well 
«s begin, the work of the engagement ; and whenever the regu- 
lars, upon whom is placed the dependence of the army, are bro- 
ken, the militia are at once struck with a panic, and a defeat and 
general rout is the result. 

From this I infer General Harrison to have been in error, in 
proposing to place the whole of his regular force of infantry in his 
front line. A portion of the regulars, at least, should have been 
formed in a second line. Had he met an attack, with his forces 
<lrawn up in the order he proposed, and his first line had been 
broken, his " reserve of three companies of militia infantry" would 
liave proved of but small account.(l.) 

( 1. ) The following extract from history, will show that those exceptions 
«.re not captious, nor without support from military authorities. 

" Soon after taking command of the Southern army. General Greene 
-despatched General Morgan, with four hundred continentals under Col. 
Howard. Col. Washington's cor{)s of dragoons, and a few militia, amount- 
ing in all to about six hundred, to take a position on the left of the British 
-.may, then lying at Winnsborough, under Lord Cornwallis, while he 
took post about seventy miles to his right. This judicious disposition, ex- 
cited his Lordship's apprehensions for the safety of Ninety-Six and Au- 
t,nista, British posts, which he considered as menaced by the movements 
of Morgan. 

" Colonel Tarleten,with a strong detachment, amounting in horse and 
foot, to near a thousand men, was immediately despatched by Cornwallis, 
e.o the protection of Ninety-Six, with orders to bring General Morgan to 
battle if possible. To the ardent temper and chivalrous disposition of 
the British Colonel, this direction was perfectly congenial. Greatly su- 
perior in numbers, he advanced on Morgan w ith a menacing aspect, and 
<;ompelled him at first to fall back rapidly. But the retreat of the Ameri- 
■can commander was not long continued. Irritated by pursuit, reinforced 
by a body of militia, and reposing great confidence in the spirit and firm- 
ness of his regular troops, he halted at the Cowpens, and determined to 
gratify his adversary in his eagerness for combat. This was on the night 
of tlie 16th of January, 1781. Early in the morning of the succeeding 
day, Tarleton being apprised of the situation of Morgan, pressed towards 
him with redoubl^ rapidity, lest by renewing his retreat, he should 
:again elude him. 

" But Morgan now had other thoughts than those of flight. Already 
had he for several days been at war with himself, in relation to his con- 
duct. Glorying in action, his spirit recoiled from the humiliation of re- 
treat, and his resentment was roused by the insolence of pursuit. This 
•mental conflict becoming more intolerable to him than disaster or death, 
his courage triumphed perhaps over his prudence, and he resolved upon 
putting every thing to the hazard of the sword. 

"By military men who have studied the subject, his disposition of bat- 
tle is said to have been masterly. Two light parties of militia were ad- 
vanced in front, with orders to feel the enemy as they approaclied; and 
preserving a desultory well-aimed fire, as they fell back to the front line, 



The army proceeded on towards the Prophet's Tos^rir, 

" Our march," says General Harrison, "was slow and cautions, amS 
much delayed by the examination of every place which seemed calculate^S 
for an ambuscade. Indeed the- ground was for some tira« so unilivorable,- 
that I y>^as obliged to change the position of th? several eorps, three timeif 

to range with it, and renew the conflict. The main body of the militiw 
composed this line^ with General Pickens at its liead. At a suitable dis- 
tance in the rear of the first line, a second w^as stationed, composed of the- 
continental infantry, and two companies of Virginia militia; c^mmarided 
by Colonel Howard. Washington's cavalry, reinforced vfith a company 
of mour>ted militia, armed witli sfjl>res, were held- in reserve, 

" Posting himself, then, ia the line of the regulars, he waited in silence 
the advance of the enemy. 

" Tarleton, coming in sight, hastily formed his disposition for battle, and 
commenced the assault. Of this conflict, the follo\Ting piv!rture is fronv 
the pen of General Lee : 

" 'The American light parties quidily yielded, fell back aiid arrayecf 
with Pickens. Tlie enemy, shouting, rushed forward upon the froniJ 
line, which retained its station, and poured in a elose fire: but contin- 
uing to advance wilh the bayonet on oar militia, they refired. and gainecJ 
with haste the second line. Here, with part of the corps, Piv^kens took 
post on Howard's right, and the /est fled to their horses, probably with 
orders to remove them to a farther distance. Tarleton pushed forward^ 
and was received by his adversary with unshaken firnmess. The con- 
test became obstinate; and each party, animated by ^he example of its 
leader, nobly contended for victory. Our line maintained itself so ivrmly^ 
as to oblige the enemy to order up his reserve. Ths advance of IMcAr^ 
thur reanimated the British line, which again moved forward, and out- 
stretching our front, endangered Colonel Howard's rig-ht. This officer 
instantly took measures to defend his Hank, by directing his right compa- 
ny lo change its front; but mistaking this order, the company fell back;, 
upon which the line began to retire, and General Morgan directed it to- 
retreat to the cavalry. "This mancruvre being performed with precision,, 
our flank became relieved, and the new posicion was assumed with 
promptitude. Considering this retrograde movement the precursor of 
flight, the British line rushed on with impetiHJsity and disorder, but as ii 
drew near, Howard faced about, and gave it a close and murderous fire, 
Stunned by this une:xpected shock, the most advanced of the enemy, re- 
coiled in confusion. Howard seized the happy moment, and followed his 
advantage with the bayonet. This decisive step gave us the day. The 
reserve having been brought near the line, shared in the destruction of 
our fire, and presented no rallying point to the fugitives. A part of the 
enemy's cavalry, having gained our rear, fell on that poition of the mili- 
tia W'ho had retired to their horses. Washington struck at them with hit* 
dragoons, and drove them before him. Thus by a simultaneous effort,^ 
the infantry and cavalrj' of the enemy were routed. Morgan pressed 
home his success, and the pursuit Iiecame vigorous and general. 
^ '■' ' In this decisive battle, we lost about seventy men, of whom, twelve 
only were killed. The British infantry, with the exception of the bag- 
gage guard, were nearly all killed or taken. One hundred, including teii 
officers, were killed; twenty-three officers and five hundred priva:tes, wert» 
taken. The artillery, 800 muskets, two standards, thirty-five baggagg- 
wagons, and one hundred dragoon horses, fell iii-to our possession.' " 



iTi l*ne distance of a mile. At half past two o''clock, we passed a small 
*;reek at the distance of one mile and a half from the town, and entered 
nn open wood, where the army was halted, and again drawn up in order 
•of battle." 

This precautionary course, po just and proper to secure him- 
t5elf against anibuscade or surprise, pursued by General Harri- 
son in his approach upon the Indians, renders still more strange 
and tinaccountable, his extraordinary remissness alter his arrival 
at the Prophet's Town. A natural weakness must, indeed, be 
attendant upon the mind of that man who could exhibit at one 
time so much praisev.'orthy vi(3:ilance,and at the next momcnt,(with 
evidences crowding upon him of the dangers by which he was 
surrounded, and the necessity for continued vigilance,) be found 
disrcgaiding all proper precaution, and thereby afTord evidences 
of such a want of ordinary perception, as did General Harri- 
son, according to his own accourit of his conduct, on that occa- 
sion. 

" During the whole of the last day s march," says General Harrison, 
■■■ ' parties of Indians toere constantly about us, mid eoery effort urns made by 
f.he interpreters, to speak to them, but in vain ! New attempts of ihe kind 
were novv made, but proving equally ineffectual, a Captain Ual)ois, cf the 
spies and guides, offering to go with a flag to the town, I despafched him 
with an interpreter to request a conference with the Prophet; in a few mo- 
ments, a message wa? sent hy Captain Dubois, to inform me that in his 
xjttempt to advance, the India/is appeared iiibolh his flanks, and although 
lie had spokew to them in the most friendly manner, they refused to an- 
swer, but beckoned him to go forward, and constantly endeavored to cut 
him off from the array. Upon this information, I recalled the Captain, 
■and determined to eiiramp for the night, and take some other means for open- 
ing a conference with the Prophet. '(2.) Whilst I was engaged in tracing 

(2,) Burr's life of Harrison, gives the following: 

"The Captain started forward with an interpreter, and the army mo- 
ved slowly after, in order of battle. 

" The gallant envoy had not been gone Jong, before he vsent back a 
messenger, to say that the Indians were around iiim m considerable num- 
bers, and endeavoring to cut liim off from the army; and that they would 
not listen to the interpreter. The Governor immediately recalled the Cap- 
tain, and resolving to treat the Indians as enemies, moved on to attack theuu 
ile was met directly after by three Indians, one a counsellor of the Pro- 
phet. They were sent to know why the army was advancing upon them, 
and stated thct the Prophet wished to avoid hostilities, and had sent a pa- 
cific message by the Indians despatched by the Governor from Fort Har- 
rison, but That these men had unfortunately taken the southern route in 
llicir return, and thus missed the army." 

Then, in an article in the Tippecanoe Text-Book, stated to be an ex> 
tract from McAffee's History of the War in tiie Western country, it is said: 

" Governor Harrison, during this last effort to open a negotiation, which 
was sufiicient to show his wish for an accommodation, resolved no longer 
to hesitate in treating the Indians as enemies. He, therefore, recalled Cap- 
tain Dubois, and moved on with a determination to attack tJiejn." All these 



40 

the lines for the ©Rcampment, Major Daviess, who corpmanded ihe wg' 
goons, came up to inrorm me that he had penetrated to the Indian lields— - 
that the ground was entirely open and favorable — that the Indians in front, 
had manifested nothing but hostility, and had answered every attempt to 
bring them to a parley, with contempt and insolence. It was immediately 
advised by all the oliicers around me, to move forward. A similar wish, 
indeed, pervaded all the army — it was drawn up in excellent order, ana: 
every man appeared eager to decide the contest immediately. Being informe'iS 
that a good encampment might be had upon the Wabash, I i/ielded toichaf. 
appeared the general wish, and directed the troops to advance, taking care, 
however, to place the interpetrcr« in front, with directions to invite a 
conference with any Indians they might meet with. We had not advan- 
ced above four hundred yards, when I was informed that three Indian? 
had approached the advanced guards, and had expressed a wish to speak 
to me. I fuund upon their arrival, that one of them was a man in great 
estimation with the Prophet. He informed me, ' that the chiefs were vmcli 
surprised at my advancing upon theiii so rapidly — that they were given to 
understand by the Delawares and iMiamies, whom I had sent to them a 
few days before, that I would not advance to their town, until T had re- 
ceived an answer to my demands made through them. That this aiistcer Jtad 
been despatched by the Potaw'atamie chief Winemac, w ho had accompanied 
the Miamies and Delawares on their return; that they bad left the Pro- 
phet's town, two days before, with a design to meet me, but unfortunately 
taken the road on the south sride of the Wabash.' I answered them ' that I 
hadnv intention of altacki7ig them, until I had discovered that they would not 
comply %uith the demands uihich I hadmad^ — that I would go on and encamp 
at the Wabash, and in the moTTting zconld have an intervieio unth the Prophet 
and his chiefs, and explain to them the determination of the President — 
that in the mean time, no hostilities should be committed.' He seemed 
much pleased with this, and promised me that it should be observed on 
his part, I then resumed my march; we sfrack the cultivated gjounvis 
about five hundred yards below the town, but as they extended to the 
bank of the Wabash, there was no possibility of getting an encampmenJ 
which wa8 provided with both wood and water. i\Fy guards and inter- 
preters being still with the advanced guards, and taking the direction of 
the town, thk army Followeo, and advanced v-ithin ahont 150 yards, 
when about 50 or 60 Indians gallied out, and with loud exclamations, 
called to the cavalry and to the militia infantry, which were on my right 
flank, to halt. 1 immediately advanced to the front, catised the army io 
halt, and directed an interpreter to request some of the chiefs to come to 
me. In a few moments, the man who had been with me before, made his 
appearance. I informed him that my object for the present, was to pro- 
cure a good piece of ground to encamp on, where we could get wood and 
water — he informed me that there icas a creek to the nort Incest, xchich he thought 
would suit our purpose. I immediately despatched two officers to examine 
it, and they reported that the situation was excellent, I then took leave 
of the chief, and a mutual promise was again made for a suspension of 
hostilities until we could have an interview on the following day." 

If "during the wole of the last day's march, parties of Indians 
were constantly hovering- about hinn," General Harrison was 

accounts were either published by General Harrison— or under bis per- 
sonal supervision. Which is the truth ? Let his confidential committee 
answer. 



41 

thereby notified, that they were reconnoitering his forces, and that 
Ihey were keeping- a good look out upon his movements ; and 
their hostility was as clearly evidenced by the fact, 'Hlial everij 
effort that was made by the interpreters to speak to them, was hut in 
vain.''^ If these circumstances had not satisfied General 
Harrison, that the Indians were belli^erant in their in- 
tentions towards him and his army, the fact that they refused to 
communicate wiih Capt. Dubois, and attempted to cut him ofF; 
and the conununicatiou of Major Daviess, "that the Indians in 
front had manifested nothing but hostility, and answerd every at- 
tempt to bring them to a parley, with contempt and insolence," 
ought to have done so — ought to Jiave put him on his guard, 
and prompted him to the greatest precaution against a surprise 
— and by efficiency of measures, he ought to have satisfied the 
Indians of the strength and vigilance of his army. When »' every 
man appeared eager to decide the contest," and the chiefs of the 
Indians " were much surprised at his advancing upon them so 
rapidly," was it not then, sir, the time for him to have struck the 
l)lovv — or, to have put himself in such position as to have been 
able to destroy the savages at the moment they refused his terms 1 
and should he not have required them to comply instanterf 
Until he "had received an answer to his demands," should he 
not, 1 would again inquire, have taken and held possession of 
their town] If "an answer had been dispatched by VVinemac, 
who had gone down on the south side of the Wabash," the Pro- 
phet, notwithstanding, was there, ready to give an immediate 
answer himself, Jf the conduct of the Indians had not convinced 
General Harrison that it was not their intenrion to comply with 
his demands, I know not what could have done so. Untd he had 
liad an interview, at least with the Prophet himself, his troops 
should not have laid by their arms. Why delay till morning to 
demand an answer which had already been made up by the Pro- 
phet and sent olT with Winemac? What General, (save Har- 
rison,) who had regard for his own life and that of his officers and 
poldiers, would have allowed sleep to come over them, while they 
lay within the grasp of a hostile wily Indian foe? 

Energy of character and promptitude of action, are among the 
most essential qualities of an able military chieftain. But, these, 
without promptitude of decision, which is alone to be found where 
genius abides, would leave an individual extremely deficient as 
the commander of an army. Then, sir, I ask you, and every oth- 
er individual of a discerning mind — and I care not whether they 
liave so much knowledge of military operations as a spinster, to 
read the account of the battle of Tippecanoe, as given by General 
Harrison himself, and tell mo if lie did not, by his own showing, 
there exhibit a most palpable, and as it proved, a most unfortu- 



42 

nate and sinful want of decision. Having once " determined to 
encamp for the night" on ground of liis own choosing, " wliile 
he was tracing the lines for the encampment," he was induced 
to ^^ yield to what appeared to he the general wish, and directed the 
troops to advance." TJiis ^^ general loisfi" as he informs us, was 
** to decide the contest immediately.^* But, wlien the enemy sent 
their messengers to him to express "their surprise at his ad- 
vancing upon them so rapidly," forsootii ! he tells the savages 
"he had no intention or attacking them — until he had discovered 
that they would not comply with the demands which he had 
made" — a matter which they had already fully shown to him 
by their deportment. Yet, notwithstanding, he suffers "his ad- 
vanced guards" to be "followed by his army," and "to advance 
within about twenty-seven rods" of the Prophet's Town — then 
when he hears the " loud exclamations" of the frightened sava- 
ges, " he advances to the front and causes his army to halt," and 
at the request of the terrified Indians, turns off to the left, and 
takes up his encampment on ground selected for him by his savage 
foes! 

" But stop, sir," I fancy you may say, " You are assailing Gen- 
eral Harrison's reputation as an officer — and do you not know 
that his conduct at the Tippocanoe, was approved of by President 
Madison, and that his military genius and skill has been applaud- 
ed by General Miller]" That I do, sir, I answer — and I do fur- 
ther know, that the learned Bishop Berkley once wrote a hook to 
prove that there was no such thing as matter : and that the Rever- 
end Gotten Mather wrote another book with a view to prove thai 
there ivere such creatures as witches I Notwithstanding, every 
body still perceives there is matter, and no body now believes in 
witches. (3.) 

(3.) That it may not be said that it is a new thing to question General 
Harrison's character ns a military commander, and tliat I am among the 
first to do so, I give the following extract from the Aeiv-Yurk ^Spectator, 
of October 20, 1813, then a leading federal paper, and now one of thehrst 
of the British Whig organs of this state, and among the most ardent sup- 
porters of General Harrison for the Presidency: 

" Harrison was employed, and Ohio militiamen by thousands, and 
oven tens of thousands, ])laced in liis hands. Willi the aid of the unfor- 
tunate Winchester, he dehvered one army to death and captivity at the 
River Raisin; and sacrijlced haff of a/to(hei- a/ * Fort Meigs.'" ''He 
was besieged in that Fort for months by a few British and Indians ; and 
instead of marching to Maiden or retaking Detroit, he always acted on 
the defensive. 

" He called loudly, more than once, for all the militia of Ohio, to save 
him from the tomahawk of the savage. More than once, Kentucky, 
Ohio, Pennsylvania, and even the moimtains of Virginia, poured forth 
their motley hosts to liis relief and rescue. Discomfiture, cmitivity and 
disgrace, attended all his movements." 



43 

''I found the ground destined for the encampment/' says General Har- 
rison, " not altogether such as I could wish it." 

Again, by turning to the 5th voL of Niles" Register, page 172, of the Gtli 
of JNuvember, lol.'i, the following passage will be found: 

" At a special meeting of ihe Common Council of iNevv-York, n motion 
was made to present .Mujor General Harrison w ilh a sword and the free- 
dom of the city, as the like had been be.^iowed on Decatur, Perry, &;c. 
But the motion was iMOGATIVED : Ayes 5— .\OF.S ]2." 

Then, here is an extract from the Journals of the Senate of the United 
States, as reported in Niles' Register, April 13, 1816: 

" The .Senate resumed the consideration of the joint resolution, direct- 
ing medjld to be struck, and, together with the tlianks of Congress, prC' 
seiited to Major Cieneral Harrison and Covcrnor Shelby, and for other 
purposes. Alter sonjc discussion, I\lr. Lacock moved to amend the reso* 
lution, by striking therefrom Major General Harrison, 'i'he motion was 
determined in the afiirmafive, by the following vote: 

" Yeas— Messrs. Gillard, Gore, Hunter, King. Lacock, 3Iason, Roberts, 
Thompson, Jackson, Tait, Turner and \.irnum — 12. 

"Nays — Messrs. Barber, liarry. Gondii, Horsev, Macon, Morrow, 
Ruggles, Talbot, Wells, and Williams— 10." 

I'he following opinion of Gen. Harri.son's military qualilication.s, was 
expressed by the ofilicers of his army, at the lime be was in command. 
They were certainly better judges then, than others can be after the 
lapse of twenty-live years. 

" Grand Camp, Ohio Militia, August 29, 1813. 
* * ^ * * * " Resolved, That after the various 

requisitions and complicated demands from his Excellency, Major General 
Harri.son, wo highly approve of his Excellency, the Governor's conduct 
on the occasion, and fully coincide with him in the propriety of leaving 
force suhicient to answer any emergency. * * * * • 

" [E? Resolved, 'J'hat the conduct of his Excellency, the Commander- 
in-Chief, WILLIA3I H. HARRISON, of the North-western Army, oa 
this occasion, is shrouded in mystery, and to its. perfectly inexplicable. 

'* Resolved, That the foregoin<r preamlih- and resolutions be signed by 
the general and fiehl olhcers and commanfianls of independent corps, ap- 
proving the same in their own and in bclialf of their respective com- 
mands; and that a copy of the proceedings be delivered by the Secretary 
to his Excellency the Governor, and a copy to the printer at Frankhnton, 
and each of the printers in Chillicoihe, with a request that all the prin- 
ters in the State would give publicity lo the same; also, that the same be 
signed by the president, and attested by the secretary. 

•'JAiMES MANARV, IJrigadier General, President. 

*• Attest: Ezra Osbukn, Brigade Quartermaster, Secretary. 
Robert Luca.s, Brig. Gen. Allen Trimble. Major, 

John AIcDonald, Col. N. Bcasley, Capt. Com't. 

James Denny, Col. James Wilson, Major, 

William Keys, Col. Pre.sly Morris. Brig. IMajor, 

John Furgison, Col. John Boggs, JMajor, 

Isaac Bonser, Col. Wm. Rutledge, Brig. Major. 

James Kilgore, Major, Richard Hocker, Capt. Com't. 

John Willet, Major, Eden Fennimoro. Brig. Q. M. 

'* WILLIAM KEY BOND, Judge Advocate." 



44 

Why, then, in the name of common sense, did he put his army 
down upon it ? The possession of the most ordinary perceptive 
faculties would have sent him to some other spot. Why was" 
the ground "not altogether such as he could wish itl" To this 
question, he affords the answer. The ground, he says, "v/as 
indeed, admirably calculated for the encampment of regular 
troops that were opposed to regulars — hul it afforded great faci- 
iity to the approach of savages /" Were his troops opposed to 
regulars — or were there any in the country from whom he might 
fear an attack] No — not one! But there was an Indian foe 
whom he had marched out to subdue, and whose approach, un- 
der the cover of night, he had reason to fear. Yet, (as we have 
it in his own account of his conduct,) within an enemy's territory, 
and that enemy savages, " who had manifested nothmg but hos- 
tility," he encamped his men, and suffered them to sleep on 
ground pointed out for him by the enemy, and which he also 
knew ^'' afforded greet facilities to the approach of savages.^' 

General Harrison states that he followed the practice of Gene- 
ral Wayne, in the formation of the columns of his army, and it 
would seem that there were much more which he might have 
copied to advantage from the conduct of the old hero of the In- 
dian wars. Had General Harrison remembered the lessons of 
military instruction which were communicated to him by General 
Wayne, he had not applied to his enemy to point out to him the 
ground on which he teas to encamp his army. For it is well 
known to have been the principle and practice of Wayne, nni 
to let his adversary know where his men were encamped for the 
night. 

"It was a piece of dry oak land." aays General Harrison, ^'rising 
about ten feet above the level of Uie marshy prairie in front, (towards the In- 
dian town,) and nearly twice that height, above a similar prairie in the 
rear, through which, and near to this hank ran a srciViWsireiim clothed with 
willows, and other lirushicood. Towards the left fiank, this bench of high 
land widened considrfably, but became gradiially narrower in the oppo- 
site direction, and at the distance of one hundred and fifty yards from the 
right flank, terminated in an abrupt point. The two columns of infantnj, 
occupied the front and rear of this ground, at the distance of about 
one hundred and fifty yards from each other on the left, and something 

Gen. Miller, who lately wrote a letter to the Hon. Mr. Webster bols- 
tering up Gen. Harrison's military character, told a different story at 
Hancock, N. IL, where the people gave him a public dinner, directly af- 
ter the tvar. In his speech on that occasion, Gen. Miller, after compli- 
menting most of the prominent ofilcers of the army, said, " as for General 
Harrison, he should not speak of him as HE DID NOT CONSIDER 
HIM AS POSSESSING EITHER THE COURAGE OR ABILITIES 
NECESSARY TO MAKE A GOOD OFFICER." This can be proved 
by unimpeachable evidence, if Gen. Miller or his friends deny it.— Bost. 
Post. 



45 

more than half that distance on the right flank— these flanks were filled 
up, the first, by hvo companies of moimted riflemen . amounting to about one 
hundred and twenty men, under the command of Major General Wells of 
the Kentucky militia, who served as Major; the other by Spencer^s com- 
pany of mounted nfiemen, which amounted to eighty men. The front line 
was composed of one battalion of United States infantry, under com- 
mand of Major Floyd, flanked on the right h^^- two companies oi xi\\\\'i\;\, and 
on the left by one company. The rear line was composed of a battalion 
of United States troops, under the command of Captain Baen, acting as 
Major, and four companies of militia infantry, under Lieutenant Colonel 
Decker. The regular troopte of the line joined the mounted riflemen, un- 
der General Wells on the left flank: and Colonel Decker's battalion form- 
ed an angle with Spencer's company on the left, [right.] (4.) 

" Two troops ^f dragoons, amounting to, in the aggregate, about sixty 
men, were encamped in the rear of the left flank, and Captain Parke's 
troop, which was larger than the other two, in the rear of the front line. 
Our order of encampment varied little from that above described, excep- 
ting when some peculiarity of the ground made it necessary. For a night 
attack, the order of encampment, was the order of battle, and each man 
slept immediately opposite to his post in the line. It was my constant 
custom, to assemble all the field officers, at my tent every evening, by 
signal— to give them the watch-word and tlieir instructions for the night 
— those given the night of the sixth, were that each corps which formed 
a part of the exterior line of the encampment, should hold its own ground 
until relieved. The dragoons were directed to parade, dismounted, in 
case of a night attack, with their pistols in their belts, and to act as a 
corps de reserve. The camp was defended by two captain's guards, con- 
sisting each of four non-connmissioned ofl^cers and forty-two privates, and 
two subaltern's guards of twenty non-commissioned officer.-- and privates. 
Tne whole under the command of a field oflicer of the day." 

(4.) In the Tippecanoe Text-Book, page 10 and 11, appears an extract 
from McAflee's history, with a certiflcate of Waller Taylor, who was aid 
to General Harrison, certifying that the same is entirely correct, as it re- 
lates to the situation of the ground upon which Harrison encamped his ar- 
my. IMr. Taylor in his certificate, says—" the spot was selected by him- 
self and one Clark, who acted as Brigade Major to Colonel Boyd;" and 
he declares " that no intimation was given by the Indians of their wisl* 
that the Americans should encamp there." Mr. Walter Clark also further 
certifies — " that he did not go to the Wahash above the town — but that it 
has ever hcen lus belief [strong testimony !] that the position Genera] 
Harrison's army occupied, was the best that could be found any where 
near them; and that he believed that nine-tenths of the officers were of 
that opinion;" and ''J. Snelling. Lieutenant Colonel of the 6th infantry," 
gives his certificate also, " that in his opinion, the ground on which the 
army encamped, combined the advantage of wood and water, and a de- 
fensible position in a greater degree than any other spot in that section 
of the country." 

These certificates were made to sustain General Harri.^on's character, 
ns a military chieftain. But the only force I can discover in them, is to 
contradict G(»neral Harrison. If he has written truly, then Iheir certifi- 
cates pass for nothing. Further, if General Vixxmson trusted no Cvlonelor 
other officer, as he has himself stated, the certificates of his subordinates 
are without credit. 



46 

Such was the disposition made by Gen. Harrison of his forces, 
on the ill-fated evening of the 6Lh of November, 1811, when his 
people lay down to sleep, to be awakened by "the yells of the 
savages," — and many were aroused but to meet the Indians at 
the door of their tents, and to have their brains knocked out 
with their murderous tomahawks. "The camp was defended by 
two captain's guards, consisting each of four non-commissioned 
officers and forty-two privates and two subaltern's guards of 
twenty non-commissioned officers and privates." This forms 
an aggregate of 112 officers, non-commissioned officers and 
privates. Deducting for the officers and non-commissioned of- 
^xers twelve, the guards are shown to have embraced one hun- 
drel sentinels, which by appointing one-third, the usual number, 
to be on duty at a time, would give men for thirry-three posts 
with single sentinels; and these camp guards were all the pro- 
tection which was afforded to General Harrison and his sleeping 
army. Not a picket did he send out I Not c single out-post did 
he establish, to icatch the movements of the enemy ! 

" It may, perhaps, be imagined," says General Harrison, " that 
some means might have been adopted, to have made a more 
early discovery of the approach of the enemy to our camp — 
but," continues he, "if I had employed two-thirds of the army, 
on out-posts, it would have been ineffectual." Who, ever be- 
fore, or since, has read or heard of a commander of an army 
having put himself do^vn within the neighborhood of an enemy, 
and under his very eye, without sending out a single picket, or 
establishing an out-post to observe the movements of his adver- 
sary? In this, General Harrison's conduct is without a parallel; 
and what is his excuse? Why, "that if he had used two-thirds 
of his army for that purpose, it icouLl have been ineffectual; that 
the Indians would have found means to pass between them!" 
Monstrous ! It is but a common circumstance that pickets and 
out-posts are surprised and cut ofTand that sentinels are evaded 
— but what commander, save General Harrison, with the sup- 
position that this might possibly be done, has neglected to esta- 
blish out-posts, to send out pickets and to post sentinels ? In 
my opinion, )f General Harrison had acted with due precaution, 
even after he had taken up his position on the unfavorable 
ground, (for him,) which had been pointed out by his enemy, ho 
would have established out-posts in or so near the Prophet's town, 
as to have been able to watch the movements of the Indians — 
with pickets sent out in different directions from his camp, taking 
posts at such places as afforded the best advantage to observe 
the approach of the savages ; and to these he would have added 
frequent patroles. Had he made such precautionary arrangements, 
(instead of laying himself down to sleep with but a few scnti- 



47 

nels within iiis camp,) thou^li they all might possibly have been 
evaded by the sava^res, the probability is, that they wou'd not, 
at least, so far as to have allowed them to furruund his whole 
force, before he was aware of their approach. One would have 
supposed that the vigilance of the Indians, "who were constantly 
about him durinir the whole of the last day's march," observing his 
movements and'his every step, would have adaionished General 
Harrison of the necessity of keeping a look out for them, (if his 
military genius had not suggested it to his mind,)but it seems it 
did not. 

T):e whole conduct of General Harrison on that occasion, so 
unfortunate to our fellow-citizens who served under his command, 
was hi(-!ily censurable. Any one who will take the trouble to 
examiife the account published by himself, wilt find nothing to 
commend— hut every thing to condemn. The forces of G.-neral 
Harrison, amounted to very little ab-'ve eight hundred non-com- 
missioned (>lficers and privates. Th<- Prophet's forces, he thinks 
to have been but a trifle inferior to his own. He is ^^ convinced 
they were at least six hundred.'' The Indians had observed all 
his prwioi.s movements, and when they saw him ensconced m 
camp on the extr-miity of the table of land, just where they desi- 
red him, surrounded by marshy prairies and bushes close up to 
his lines, within which, (as they found, upon reconnoitenng,) the 
whole of his forces were drawn, quiet and sleeping, with not a 
man outside of the lines of his camp to observe their movements— 
they, no doubt, thought his people an easy prey— they then looked 
upon General H irrison and his men, as they did upon the animals 
that blindly run in^o their snares— and trusting in the weaknese 
as well as tlie unwaryness of the Americans, and the advanta- 
ges which a surprise would afford them, and being emboldened 
by the near equality of their numbers, they resolved to make the 
attack, whi.di resulted in the killing and wounding of one hundred 
and ei'hry-cight of the Americans, among which number fell 
some of the most valuable and exalted citizens of our country, 
at ihe expense of the lives of thirty-six or forty of the Indians— 
icho had been mistaken; for what they supposed the weakness ot 
the Americans, was bur the weakness of their General! 

The following is the account given hy General Harrison of the 
proceedings of his forces during the attack : 

" The troops were re^iilarly o;illed up an hour before day, and made^to 
continue under arms until it was quite liglit. On the morning of the 7tl! 
I had risen at a qu;H-tor after four o'clock, and the signal for calling out 
the men, would have heon given in two minutes, when the attack com- 
menced. It be^^nn on the left fuink—hni a single gun was fired by the sen- 
tinels, or hy the'gnard in tliat. direction, which made not the lenst resist- 
ance, but abandoned the olficer, and tied into camp, and the first notice 
which the troops of that Jiaak had of ihe danger, was from the yells of the 



48 

savages, with'ni a shurt dlstanc of the line — but even under those circum- 
stances, the men were not wanting to themselves or to the occasion. Such 
of them as were awake, or were easily awakened, seized their arms and took 
their stations: others which were more tardy, had to contend with the enemy 
in the doors of their tents. The storm first fell upon Captain Barton's 
company of mounted riflemen, which formed the left angle of the rear line. 
The fire upon these was excessively severe, and they suffered considera- 
bly before relief could be brought to them. Some few Indians passed into 
the encampment near the angle, and one or two penetrated to some dis- 
tance before they were killed. I believe all the other companies were un- 
der arms, and tolerably formed before they were fired on. The morning 
was dark and cloudy — onr fires afforded a partial light, which, if it gave 
us some opportunity of taking our positions, was still more advantageous 
to tJie enemy, affording them, the 7neans of taking a surer aim — they were 
therefore extinguished as soon as possible. Under all these discouraging 
circ7imstances, the troops, (nineteen-twentieths of whom had never been 
in an action before,) behaved in a manner that can never be too much ap- 
plauded. They took their places without noise, and with less confusion 
than could have been expected from veterans placed in a similar situation. 
As soon as I could mount my horse, I rode to the angle that was attacked — 
I found that Barton's company had suffered severelj, and the left of Gei- 
ger's entirely broken. I immediately ordered Cook's company, and the 
late Captain WentwortKs, under Lieitte7ia7tt Peters, to be brought up from 
the centre of the rear line, where the ground was much more defensible, 
and formed across the angle in support of Barton's and Geiger's. My at- 
tention was then engaged by a heavy firoigfrom the left of the front line, 
where were stationed the small company of United Stules Riflemen, (then, 
however, armed with muskets,) and tlie compa .ies of Buen, Sa-lling, and 
Prescott, of the 4lh regiment. I found Major J )aviess forming th" Dragoons, 
in the rear of those companies, and understanding that the heaviest part 
of the enemy's fire proceeded from some trees about fifteen or twenty pa- 
ces in front of those companies, I directed the Major to dislodge them 
with a part of the Dragoons. Unfortunately, the Major s gallantry deter- 
mined him to execute the order with a smaller force than was sufficient, which 
enabled the enemy to avoid him in front, and attack h'sffanks. The Major 
teas mortally roounded, a7id his parly driven back. The Indians were, how- 
ever, immediately and gallantly dislodged from their advantageous posi- 
tion, by Captain Snelling, at the head of his company. In the course of 
a few minutes after tJie commencement of tite attack, the fire exterided along 
the LEFT FLANK, the WHOLE OF THE FKONT, the RIGHT FLANK, and PART 

of the rear line. Upon Spencer's mounted Riflemen, and the right of 
Warwick^s company, which was posted on the right of the rear line, it 
was excessively severe; Captain .Spencer and his first and second Lieu- 
tenants were killed, and Captain Warwick was mortally wounded — those 
companies, however, still bravely maintaining their posts, but Spencer's 
had suffered so severely, and having originally too much ground to occu- 
py, I reinforced them with Robb's company of Riflemen, whicii had been 
driven, or by mistake, ordered from their position, on the left flank, to- 
wards the centre of the camp, and lilled the vacancy thnt had been occu- 
pied by Rohb with Prescotfs comf.any of the 4th United States Regiment. 
My great object was to keep the lines entire, to prevent the enemy from 
breaking into the camp, until day-light, which should enable me to make 
a general and effectual charge. With this view, I had reinforced every 
part of the line that had suffered much; and as soon as the approach of 



49 



morning discovered itself, I withdrew from the front line Snelling's, Po- 
sey's, (under Lieutenant Albright,) and Scott's— and from the rear line, 

IVilsoTi's companies, and drew them up upon the left flank, and at the 
same time, I ordered Cook's and Baen's companies, the former from the 
rear, the latter from the front line, to reinforce the right flank; foreseeing 
that at these points, the enemy would make their last eftbrts. Major 

VVells, who commanded on the left flank, not knowing my intentions pre- 
cisely, had taken the command of these companies, and charged the enemy, be- 
fore I had formed the dragoons, with which I meant to support the m- 
Gantry; a small detachment of these, were, however, ready, and proved 
amply sufllcient for the purpose. The Indians were driven at the point 
of the bayonet, and the dragoons pursued and forced them into the marsh, 
where they could not be followed. Captain Cook and Lieutenant Lar- 
abee had. agreeably to my order, marclied their companies to the right 
flank, had formed them under the fire of tlie enemy, and being then joined 
by the HJlemrn of that flank, had charged the Indians, killed a number, and 
P7U the rest to a precipitate flight. A favorable opportunity was here offei-ed 
to pursue the enemy with dragoons, biU being engaged^ at that time on the 
other flank, I did riot observe it until it Kas too late."(o.) 

Such is General Harrison's account of the affair at Tippeca- 
noe— so disgraceful to him, as a military commander— and unfor- 



(5.) DIAGRAM OF THE BATTLE OF TIPPECANOE. 



19 18 20 



"^^^mmrnm 



(Front.) "S^i^vj^N^v^.i^i^^^y^^ 



VoW-^;v;w:t^');;rfjv. 




1 Prescotl, OSnelling, 5 Larabce, 7 Hawkins, U S. inf. commanded by Major 
Floyd. — 2 Brown, 4 Cook, 6 Peters, 8 Uanoii, U S. inf. commanded by Captain 
Baen. — 9 Scott, 11 Albright, Indiana miliiia. ronunanded by Major Redmond — 
10 vVarwi(!k, 12 Wilson, 13 Hargrove, 14 Wilkins, commanded by Lieut. Col. 
Decker.— 15 Robb, 16 Geiijer, mounted rifl.Miien, commanded by Major Wells. 

— 17 Spencer, mounted rillemen, commanded by Capt. Spencer. — 18 , 19 

, 'JO I'arke, dragoons, commanded by Major Daviess, 



50 

tunate to the brave men whom he commanded. He allowed 
his army to be placed in a position where they could not act, 
and to be surprised — and all they could then do, was to keep their 
lines entire, and the savages from penetrating their camp, until 
daylight, (as it was stated by General Harrison ;) and standing- 
there in their places they could but receive the shot of the ene- 
my, the darkness of night preventing any movement by them ; 
and though they might fire their rifles in the direction of the 
foe, their shots were but at random — and when the day dawned 
the Indians were easily routed ; the hopes of the savages having' 
been based upon a surprise, and the condition of their unwary 
adversary — if no charge at all had been made upon them by the 
Americans, the light of the morning would have dispersed them. 

The attack « began on the left Jlank" — and the first notice the 
troops on that flank had of their danger, was ^"-from the yells of 
the savages,'^ who were then already upon them. " SiLch of them,'* 
eays General Harrison, " as were awake, or easily awakened, sei- 
zed their arms and took their stations : others which were more 
tardy, had to contend with the enemy in the door of their ienls.'\6.) 

How different would it have been with our people if they had 
been the attacking party, instead of the Indians? The spirit of 
Major Daviess might answer the question ! 

(6.) The Tippecanoe Text-Book, says — "They, (Gen. H. and his ar- 
my,) were no< surprised, as has been asserted; for it will be seen by re- 
ferring to mles' Register, vol. II. p. 66, that three captains, one ensign, 
one surgeon and one assistant surgeon of the 4th United States infantry, 
Jiave pubHshed certificates and statements relative to the battle, in which 
the prudence and skill of General Harrison are represented in the most 
honorable light." 

Well, now, shall we believe these 3 captains, 1 ensign, 1 surgeon 
and 1 surgeon's mate — or shall wc believe General Harrison, himself? 
Does he not describe a surprise when he says, "such of them as were 
awake?" &c. 

Again: in the Tippecanoe Text-Book, it will be found, that that very 
publication, which has been got out by the British Whigs, for the express 
purpose of patching up General Harrison as a hero, has given us the in- 
formation " that three Indians attacked Col. E. Geiger in his tent, at one 
time — that he killed one, and vanquished the other two, when he was 
wounded in the arm. That Major Floyd fought like Caesar ?w his shirt 
tail, and clothed himself with victory." Is not this, too, a picture of a 
surprise ? 

Then, again: Burr's life of Harrison, just as plainly gives the lie to the 
statement of the Tippecarioe Text- Book, that General Harrison " was 
not sJirprised.^' It says — " The treacherous Indians had crept up so near 
the sentries, as to hear them challenge when relieved. They inteiidedto rush 
upon tlie sentries a?id kill them before they could fii e; but one of them disco~ 
'veredan Indian creeping toward him in the grass and Jired. This was im- 
mediately followed by the Indian yell and a desperate charge upon the 
left flank." 



51 

However fiurprieing was General Harrison''s whole conduct^ 
there was nothing in it more so, than the fact that he had suf- 
fered his camp fires to burn through the night. They afforded 
by the light they threw out^ every facility that could be desired, 
for the Indians to observe the position of his men, while it was 
as effectual in secluding the Indians, in their approach, from the 
observation of his sentinels; and when the attack began, it ena- 
bled the Indians to single out his officers, vv^ho were readily dis- 
tinguished by their active movements in arousing and forming 
the men. That his burning camp fires had such an operation is 
■evidenced by the fact, that there were seven officers killed, and 
nine wounded — making a total oi sixteen^ hors du combat, which 
is full half of the number of the officers that properly belong to 
«ight or nine hundred men, the amount of the forces which Gen- 
eral Harrison had under his command ; and those who fell were 
the most gallant and efficient o< liis army. (7.) 

(7.) A general return of tlie killed and wounded of the arnny under the 
command of his Excellency William Henry Harrison. Governor and 
Commander-in-Chief of the Indiana Territory, in the action with the In- 
dians, near Prophet's Town, November 7, 1811. 

Kilted— One aid-de-c:unp, one captain, two subalterns, one sergeant, 
two corporals, thirty privates. 

Woiauled — xince dead— One major, two captains, twenty-two privates. 
Wou/uled— Two lieutenant-colonels, one adjutant, nine sergeants, five 
corporals;, one musician, and one hundred and two privates. 
Total killed and wounded — 188. 

Names of officers killed and wounded, as per general return. 
General Staff. — Killed — Coloael Abraham Owens, aid-de-carap to 
the Commander-in-chief. 

Field and Staff. — Wounded— Licutcntmi-Colone] Joseph Bartholo- 
mew, commanding Indiana mililia infantry ; Lieutenant-Colonel Luke 
Decker, of do.; Major Jo.seph H. Daviess, since dead, commandmg a 
squadrori of dragoons; Doctor Edward Scull, of the Indiana militia; Ad- 
jutant James Hunter, of mounted riflemen. 
" (7/iited Sta'es inf. indadnig the late Ciptain Whitney s rijle company. 

Wounded— C'ai'pt&m W. C. Baen, actinc major, since dead; Lieutenant 
George P. Peters; Lieutenant George Gooding; Ensign Henry Burch- 
vstead. 

Colonel Decker's detachment of Indiana militia, 
Wminded — Captain Jacob Warwick, since dead. 

Major Redmond's detochnierU of Indiana militia. 
Wounded— Captain John Norris. 

Major Weirs detachment of mounted rijkmeii. 
Wounded — Captain Frederick Geigcr. 
Captain Spencer''s company, including lAeiitenaiit Berry's detachment of 

nwitnted riflemen. 
Killed— Qa^tsXxi Spier Spencer; First Lieutenant Richard McMahan; 
Lieutenant Thomas Berry. 

NATII. F. ADAMS, Adjutant of the Army. 
To hi« Excellency the Commander-in-Chief. 



52 

The battle had begun under what General Harrison, himseE 
calls "discouraging circumstances." His people were fallen 
upon in their beds by the savages. The assault commenced on 
the rear of the left — where the guard fled in " without firing but 
one single shot." Had an out-post been stationed in the vicini- 
ty, it is not to be supposed that they all would have behaved in 
like manner and fled into camp without firing so as to alarm 
the whole army before the Indians were upon them. But there 
were no out-posts. Soon after the attack commenced, as we 
are informed by General Harrison, " having his attention enga- 
ged by a heavy firing from the left of Ids front line," he proceed- 
ed in that direction, where he states he found Major Daviess form- 
ing the dragoons, " and understanding that the heaviest part of 
the enemy's fire proceeded from some trees, about fifteen or 
twenty paces in front, he directed the major to dislodge them 
with a part of the dragoons." But what part of the dragoons 
were then formed, or what part of them he directed Major Daviess 
to make the charge with, does not appear. He tells us, howe- 
ver, " that unfortunately the major's gallantrij determined him to 
execute the order with a smaller force than was sufficient, which 
enabled the Indians to avoid him in front, and to attack his 
flanks — that the major was mortally wounded, and his party dri- 
ven back." This is, to say the least of it, an ingenious manner, 
if not an honorable one, for a Commander-in-Chief to account for 
the failure of a movement made under his own personal direction. 
Major Daviess was among the dead, when General Harrison 
drew up his account — and he could not contradict it, however 
false the statements of his general might be. If I should en- 
deavor to make the account probable, I would suppose that Ma- 
jor Daviess attacked the savages at the moment he was directed 
to do so by General Harrison, and with every dragoon who had 
got his breeches on, and whom he had then formed — and that he 
was defeated in his attempt to drive the enemy from their lodg- 
ment, from the insufficiency of his force, and the want of support. 
"The Indians were, however, immediately and gallantly dislodg- 
ed from their advantageous position by Captain Snelling, at the 
head of his company," but it does not appear that Snelling, in 
making this charge, acted under the direction of General Harrison. 
In a few minutes after the battle commenced, says General 
Harrison, " the fire extended along the left flank, the whole of the 
front, the right flank, and part of the rear line.'' This shows him 
to have been completely surrounded at the moment of the attack ; 
and now I would appeal to you, sir, and to the judgment of every 
man of sense in the whole country, whether acquainted 
with military science or not, if this could have been effected by 
the savages, without having given the alarm to General Harri- 



53 

mn and his armv, had he sent out any reasonable number of 
Dickets and established proper out-posts. The rear angle of the 
lines on the left had been attacked and broken, the angle on the 
left in front had been severely attacked, and one of the compa- 
nies driven in— the rear angle on the right, had been as violent- 
ly assailed, as well as the company covering the intervening 
ground between the two lines on the right ; and if they were not 
broken, they had suffered so much, that it had been necessary 
to reinforce them. Thus was our brave countrymen sorely beset, 
when—" as the approach of morning discovered itself, General 
Harrison withdrew from his front and rear line, four companies 
which he drew up on the left, and two companies which he sent 
to the right, foreseeing, (as he says he did,) that at these points 
the enemy would make "their last effort." Major Wells, who 
commanded on the left flank, "no/ knowing General Harrison's 
intentions, preci<iely, had taken the command of these companies, 
and charged the enemy, before the general had formed the dra- 
goons, wTth which he meant to support the infantry." The In- 
dians were routed and driven by Major Wells— hut certainly, this 
gallant achievement of his, could not be placed to the credit of 
the military skill of General Harrison, who did not even direct it, 
and of whose intentions the gallant Wells was ignorant at the 
time he made the movement. Captain Cook and Lieutenant 
Larabee having arrived on the right flank with their companies, 
and being joined by the riflemen of that flank, charged the In- 
dians, killed a number, and put the rest to a precipitate flight. 
But neither this gallant act, which drove the Indians entirely off, 
and terminated the engagement, could be given to the credit of 
General Harrison, as he does not claim to have ordered it, and 
he states himself to have been engaged, at the time, on the other 
flank. Thus examining the conduct of General Harrison at 
Tippecanoe, from the account furnished by himself, it appears he 
had httle hand in the movements which resulted in the dispersing 
of the Indians, and that every charge that was made by his for- 
r,es upon them, except the one conducted by Major Daviess, (8.) 

"(sTl'he following has appeared in the " Log Cabin,'' as a note to an 
extract from Burr's Life of Harrison; and if it is true, then even the at- 
tack made by Major Daviess, did not originate wjth Gen. Harrison; and 
therefore, whether that act brought lionor or blame, it should not be 
charged to Qen. Harrison. 

" Upon the first alarm, the Governor mounted his horse, and proceeded 
toward the point of attack; and finding the line much weakened there, 
iie ordered two companies from the centre of the rear line to march up, 
and form across the angle in the rear of Barton's and Geiger's companies. 
In passin" through the camp toward the left of the frontline, he met with 
Major Daviess, wlio informed him that the Indians, concealed behind 



6i 

which was a peculiarly unfortunate one, was mad^e ^a'thoiit arrf 
directions from him. Hence, it is plain and palpable, that the 
arrangement of the array, in which there was exhibited so much re- 
missness and weakness, as to frovoke the savages to make their 
attack, was the offspring of the mind of G^^nera! Harrison, him- 
self, while ail those gallant acts which repulsed the enemy, and 
put then> to flight, were performed without his direction, ant^ 
would have all been done, if he had not been there. 

That the forces of General Harrison should have conducted 
themselves with coolness and determined bravery in the defence 
of this camp^ was to be expecred—for they were brave men; and^ 
then, they had no choice — as it was death or victory. 

There was some attempt by'General Harrison, in'drawing up 
his account of the Battle of Tippecanoe, to gloss over his ex- 
tremely culpable conduct in that unfortunate and deplorable af- 
fair i and v^ith this view he exultingly adds a postscript to his let- 
ter, in which he states ««^that not a man of his was taken prison- 
er ; and that of three scalps taken hy the Indians^ two of them zvere 
recovered.'' To say nothing of the fact that the Indians had been 
permitted to penetrate his lines, and to icill and scalp his men 
within his camp- — it was a very strange matter to boast of, 'Hhai 
the Indians took none of his men prisoners.^'' when it is well un- 
derstood, that even with belligerents who are civilized, it is not 
usual for the party making an assault to take prisoners until they 
shall have become successful, and that the savages seldom take 
prisoners in battle at all; and the more strange was his boastings 
when he accompanied it with the statement,, that his lose 
amounted to one hundred and eighty-eight, killed and wounded^ 
while of the Indians, all he could make out, was forty-six killed.;r 
and erne wounded ; which onOcr was all the prisoner taken by hi? 
army. 

In a letter to the Secretary of War,, dated Prophsfs Town, 
Nov. 8, 1811, General Harrison, after announcing the attack 
which had been made on him at that place by the Indians, says,- 
** their precipitate retreat, leaving a number of their warriors 
dead on the field, and the subsequent abandonment of their town^ 
attest for us a complete and decisive victory !" and such a vic- 
tory r Having throv/n himself a willing sacrifice within the 
grasp of the savages, presenting before them every inducement 
to attempt his surprise ;. and, then, when his men, roused from 
their slumbers by the yells of the savages, were enabled by their 

some trees neat, the line, were annoying the troops very severely in that 
quarter, and requested pennission to dislodge them. In attempting this ex- 
ploit he fell mortally wounded, as did Col. Isaac White of Indiana, vvhc 
acted as a volunteer in his troop."— Jwc/o-g Hall. 



55 

own superior prowess, to repel them— but not without the loss 
of many of the most valuable citizens of our country— shall 
General Harrison for this, be dubbed a herol The Indians 
havinf been repulsed, abandoned their town, and when it contain- 
ed not a savage, General Harrison took possession of it, and 
of 5000 bushels of corn, and then burned the town; but the In- 
dians had previously captured and carried off all his beef, and a 
great number of his horses ; (9.) and with this result, and no 
other, ended the campaign; and do such services give hiin 
claims lo the suffrages of our people ? .... 

After thus reviewing the conduct of General Harrison, in his 
campaign against the Indians, I cannot regard it otherwise than 
as discreditable to himself as a military commander, and ex- 
tremely unfortunate in its result to our country. The fall of the 
brave men whom he sacrificed at Tippecanoe, was really a na- 
tional loss. The Indians were in no manner iiumbled. In the 
next season, (1812,) we found them equally liostile, arrayed 
against us with our worse than savage foes— the British. The 
conduct of General Harrison is the more to be condemned from 
the fact, that the effusion of blood might have been avoided if he 
had pursued a prompt, energetic and vigilant course towards the 
Indians from the moment ot his arriving within their country, as 
no reasonable person can doubt that it was his remissness and 



(which had been produced by the labor of the women of the In- 
rfirtJis, for their own and their children's support,) and the burning of 
their houses in the edge of winter 1 None, certainly ; unless the 
immediate driving of the savages to the British, where they were 
clothed and fed, and then arrayed against us, might be 
retrarded as such ! As a benevolent act, it couM not be highly 
estimated, when we reflect that it might have been avoided ! 

Such, sir, is a picture of General Harrison as a military chief- 
tain, without distortion or false coloring. It exliibits him as a 

(9.) The Tippecanoe Text-Book, says:— 

'' After the battle, Governor Harrison took possession of about five 
thousand bushels of corn, belonging to the Indians, and burned the Pro- 
phet's Town," and cites Niles' Register, Vol. I. page 238, where I read 
the following: — , , r j- 

" Hunter, (one of General Harrison's adjutants,) states that the Indians 
eot all their beef, and a great numlKr of their horses; they got about five 
thousand bushels of corn, and burned the Prophet's Town the day after 
the action." , , , ii ^i ■ 

In every publication of the British Whigs, I detect deceptions hke this. 
I find they have also given as the killed and wounded at Tippecanoe, of 
the Americans, a much less number than General Harrison. 



56 

governor and a general while, in the proudest days of his man- 
hood and the fullest vigor of his life and is he shown to be such 
a man as you would choose, now that he is in the sere and yel- 
low leaf, as the chief magistrate of our country, and the com- 
mander-in-chief of our armies'? Was his conduct at Tippeca- 
noe such as should give him honor — and that should be held in 
remembrance by the formation of Tippecanoe clubsT Were his 
deeds there, such as should be celebrated with processions, ban- 
ners, badges and songs] If for such conduct as that displayed 
by General Harrison at Tippecanoe, men are to be dubbed he- 
roes, and to receive honor and praise, then, indeed, sir, we may 
ask, what is the price of honor, and what is the value of glory and 
fame 1 

In this critique on the conduct of General Harrison, ( reported 
by himself,) at the battle of Tippecanoe, (which I have drawn 
up with the single motive of exhibiting his fitness to meet the 
responsibilities and to perform the duties of the office for which 
he is proposed, and not with a desire to treat him with any per- 
sonal disrespect,) I have exhibited a fair representation of the man 
at thirty-eight years of age, and his capacity for high responsibili- 
ties at that time. I will now pass over iivenly-nine years of his 
life, by briefly noticing his several performances as a military 
chieftain, and show you what he is with sixty. seven years mark- 
ed upon his brow,(10.) that you may, sir, judge of his capacity 
now to perform any high trusts ; but with his private character 
I claim not to meddle. 

A short time since, during the present month, as you will have 
seen by the newspapers, the British Whigs of Ohio, Indiana and 
Michigan, congregated at Perrysburgh, (Fort Meigs,) in a large 
body, to hear a speech from General Harrison. The meet- 
ing was said to have been convenedfor the purpose of celebrating 
the anniversary of " a victory achieved by the American arms 
over those of Great Britain," (as an afTair has been called which 
took place during the the late war, on that ground, between the 
military forces of the two nations,} yet it is well known that the 
meeting was got up by she British Whigs, for the purpose of be- 
ing made to serve the interest of their party, and that General 
Harrison was brought there expressly in order to enable them 
to make an exhibition of their candidate for the presidency, for 
whom they claim merit, not so much for his talents and capacity 
now to serve thf^ people, as for his past services, for which rea- 
sons General Harrison, instead of declaring his views in rela- 
tion to arty of the great political questions engrossing the pub- 
lic mind, and which form the distinctive characters of the two 

(10.) In a recent speech made at a public meeting in Ohio, by Gen. Har- 
rison, lie slated hiniseil" to be Ql years of age. 



57 

political parties, confined himself in his speech to a statement of 
his o2on services^ in the relation of which, however, he avowed 
some principles deservin;^ of consideration and remark. 

I have no desire to trifle with a subject so grave and important 
in its bearing as this I have under consideration, but I cannot 
refrain from stating the f^ict, that while perusing this speech of 
General Harrison, my mind involuntarily reverted to a story I 
had once read, in a work entitled Gil Bias, by Le Sage, wherein 
it was related that on a time when an old and imbecile bishop had 
been holding forth to a congregation, it was said by some, "that his 
sermon had the appoplexy ;" and then the impression forced it- 
self upon me, that General Harrison's speech might also have 
a little touch of the a apoplexy about it. 

Having enumerated, but not described, his own important ser- 
vices — (which our country had not before been advised of, 
nor does it now acknowledge,) services which he claims to 
have rendered at the Thames, at Seneca Town and at Fort 
Meigs ; (at which places, however, by his vascillating and unof- 
ficer like conduct he created a disaffection among his forces, 
amounting almost to a mutiny; and then, when there were serious 
imputations resting against him, and in circulation throughout 
the state of Ohio, instead of throwing himself upon a court cf 
inquiry, for an investigation of his conduct, as it is customary 
with military commanders, he caused his inferior and subordi- 
nate officers to sign a certificate of character,(ll.) a proceeding 
most extraordinary in its course and unbecoming the character 

(11.) Extract of a letter from Col. Croehan to General Harrison: 

'''New- Orleans, Mry 24, 1825. ^ 
" Sir — I unwillingly renew our correspondence, which I had thougiit r> 
nally closed with my letter of the 13th Aug. 1818, and that I do so, will be 
received by you as an evidence that my feelings towards you are at least 
not hostile. Did I not literally sacrifice myself to save you ? Did I not, 
at a moment when the excitement against you throughout the whole state 
of Oliio. amoxmting to general clamor, when there was almost mutiny in 
your very camp at Seneca, do every thing that you and your friends re- 
cjuired of me as necessary to reinstate you in the good opinion of tke peo- 
ple and of the army ? The success of our army required that you, the 
general-in-chief, should have the confidence of all ; and to insure that, I 
pigned addresses, without reading them, because I was told that it was 
necessary; wrote letters approving throughout your conduct, and subject 
to your corrections, without asking what they might be, because I was as- 
sured by members of your family that you yourself believed that on my 
expressions in relation to you much depended. But of what I did for 
you, enough — of what you have done for me, there is nothing to be told. 
You have personally pledged yourself to correct any false impressions 
that may have been created by the publication of the two works above 
mentioned; in a word, to speak of all things in relation to the transac- 
tions in Sandusky as they deserve." 



'68 

of a commander of an army,) General Harrison made the follow- 
ing notable declaration : 

" Feeling my rfsponsibiiify, I personally supervised and directed the 
arrangement of the army under my command. I trusted to no colonel or 
other officer. No [other] person had any handin any disposition of the army. 
Every step of warfare, whether for good or ill, was taken U7ider my oivh 
direction, and by none other."'(ll.) 

if this statement, egotistical and egregiously false as it is, had 
been made in relation to General Harrison's responsibilities as 
one of our military commanders, by some of his political friends, 
who made no pretensions to a knowledge of the details of an ar- 
my, it might have passed well enough for a political puiF. But 
coming as it does, directly from the mouth of a man who has 
passed, as he there stated, through all grades from ♦' a Lieutenant 
under Wayne, in 1793, to that of Major-General and Comman- 
der-in-Chiet of the North Western Army, nineteen years after," 
I can conceive no apology for it, and 1 am utterly unable to ac- 
count for such statement, by a person who has commanded an 
army, unless it be charged to the imbecility of age. 

If you have hopes for your country, you must found those hopes 
upon'the probable result of a conflict of arms, as experience has 
shown that blood is the only price of political freedom. Then, 
though I would not have you frightened by the vain boastings of 
an old man, just after taking a swig of hard cider,(lS.) yet, sir, 
elect General Harrison President of these United Stales, and 
you will have him established a heeo! and these remarks of his I 
have quoted, as well as every other fooiish thing he may have 
been induced to utter in relation to military operations, will be 
chronicled by the people of this country and of the Canadas, who 
are not the best instructed in the manner of the operations of 
the battle field, as the opinions of a sage in military afTairs. 
Let these statements of his own proceedings be accepted as a 
rule, and reckle:js, indeed, must be that man of his reputation 
and fame, who would attempt to organize or command an army 

(12.) What did General Harrison say, when he was not quite so old? 
Read his speech in the United States Senate, February 16, J 827, on the 
project of establishing a naval school. Here is an extract: 

'' I feel proud to say, that the defence of Fort Meigs, at which I com- 
manded, CHIEFLY depended upon the scie7it{fic exertio7is of a man to 2chom 
it is due that his v:orth should here be attested by me. I allude to the late 
Major Wood, a man who combined many valuable qualities, and who 
bade fair to have risen to a high point of professional eminence. Your 
commander had not sujicient science to have successfully defended the fort 
wUhout the ASSISTANCE of tliat individual." 

(13.) General Harrison, while speaking at Fort Meigs, took a drink of 
hard cider. So says the British Whig papers. 



' 59 

in this country or the Canadas, which should be composed of 
Americans. It" a commander should follow the course declared to 
have been pursued by General Harrison, " and trusted no colo- 
nel or other officer," and assumed those duties himself which are 
usually performed by the commanders of divisions and brigades, 
the chiefs of battalions, the commanders of companies, and the 
officers and non-commissioned officers of squads, he would with- 
out any doubt, /ec/ his responsibilities. But where shall that man 
be found, (after the race of the Harrison's are gone,) of no more 
than human strength and human intellect, with the versatility 
of talents and ubiquity of character, that shall enable him to 
shoulder such g'ldini responsihililies 1 Such responsibilities would 
have been refused by a Ccesar, and a Hannibal, or a Scipio would 
have hesitated to assume them. 

By his declaration as well as by his military operations, Ge- 
neral Harrison has set at nought all those rules of the art of war 
which have been established on the experience of a Fredrick, a 
MaWborough and a Wolf, and which have been improved upon 
by Steuben, Washington and Napoleon. Harrison, a major-ge- 
neral, and a commander-in-chief, and he, forsooth ! personally 
SUPERVISE AND DIRECT the arrangement of his whole army! The 
idea is ridiculous ! But if it were so, why ! then, there should 
have been some little saving to government in the expense of 
stationary, as the" reports of the otScers and sergeants of guards 
—adjutants' returns — brigade majors' reports — and adjutant ge- 
nerals' reports might have all been dispensed with ; as the ne- 
cessity for them was entirely superceded by the personal direct- 
ing of the commanding general, who was able to give all those 
matters, in one single general report of the army. 

Napoleon said, "give me good field officers, whom I can trust, 
and I will show you an army." The field officers of an army 
are its sinews, and without able and trusty persons to fill those 
stations, any force would be but a mob, liable to be broken at the 
moment of attack, and capable of effecting nothing. But General 
Harrison declares that he "trusted no Colonel or other officer." 
When, before this have we heard a military commander attribu- 
ting to himself the whole credit of his movements, and telhng his 
countrymen that his officers and soldiers, without whose exer- 
tions he could do nothing, were entitled to no merit in the ac- 
tion 1 Think you that a Washington or a Jackson would have 
spoken thus T(14.) 

(14.) When Colonel Johnson was received on a recent occasion in the 
city of New- York, he made a speech in reply to the address of Alderman 
Purdy, in behalf of the Common Council, from which I extract the follow- 
ing manly and honorable sentiment: 

"' I do, sir, take this much to myself— I have served my country, bul 



60 

It is an adage with military men, " that many good officers make a 
good general;" and any one who possesses the smallest knowledge 
of the details of an army, must be aware that it is but little that 
a mihtary chieftain (15.) can effect unless he has good officers, in 
numbers, in whom he can trust. To the want of such, the fail- 
ure of the Canadians in all their late revolutionary movements, 
13 mainly attributable. 

The brigadiers and colonels of an army, are the proper advi- 
sers of the commander-in-chief. It is them, and not him, who 
have the immediate command of the battahons, and who lead 
them into action ; and if the general would not trust the co- 
lonels, why ! they would not trust the general. Let any com- 
mander-in-chief of an army assume to himself to play colonel 
as well as chieftain, and he would find himself ver)' soon without 
colonels. Let him attempt personally to supervise and direct the 
arrangement of the battalions, and his chiefs of battalions would 
leave him as immediately as did General Harrison, himself, 
abandon the service of the United States during the late war, 



the merit of my short military career must be shared with others. I ne- 
ver allow myself, Mr. President, to be comphmented on an occasion like 
the present, without remembering the brave corps who shared with me 
ihe perils and dangers of the common cause." 

What would Wolfe have said of such a statement, who, on the 2d of 
.September, 1758, while he was with the British army before Quebec, 
wrote to Mr. Pitt as follows : " I begged the general officers* to consult 
together for the public utility. They are of opimon, that as more ships 
and provisions are now yet above the town, they should try, by carrying 
a corps of four or five thousand men, which is nearly the whole strength 
of the army, after the points of Levi and Orleans were left in a proper 
.state of defence, to draw the enemy from their present situation, and to 
bring them to an action. / have acquiesced m the proposal, and we are 
preparing to put it in execution ;" and again on the 9th of September, he 
wrote to Mr. Pitt as follows : " I begged the generals to consider among 
themselves, what was fittest to be done. Their sentiments were unani- 
mous, that (as the easterly winds begin to blow, and ships can pass the 
town in the night with provisions, artillery, &c.,) we should endeavor, 
by carrying a considerat)le corps into the upper river, to draw them from 
their inaccessible situation, and bring them to an action. I agreed to the 
proposal; and we are now here with about three thousand six hundred 
men, waiting an opportunity to attack them, when and wherever tliey 
can be got at ?" and what, I ask, would any military man say to such a 
statement as this of General Harrison's ? 



*A1I the colonels in chief of regiments in the British army, are also 
generals. 

(15.) The ^Mamlukes of Egypt have but one officer — a single despotic 
master — and for a warm attachment to whom they are remarked, and 
whose fortunes they generally follow with unwearied constancy. " But 
the Mamlukes/' says Volney, the historian, "have no order, discipline 



61 

because he found himself not trusted hy President Madison. (1%.) 
In all well organized armies, responsibility is attached to the 
stations of all, from the commander-in-chief, down to the com- 
mon sentinel ; and the idea of efficiency in any military force, 
where the commander-in-chief "trusts no colonel or other of- 
ficer," is about as sensible as the following which appears in the 
Tippecanoe Text-Book^ from General Harrison's recently pub- 
h'shed life : 

" h was justly remarked by a distinguished political writer immediate- 
ly after the victory of the Thames, i_an aftair to which General Harrison 
did not happen to get nigher than two miles distant,] that General Harri- 
son had added a iiew 7nanainvre to the science of military tactics — CHAUGING 
BAYONET ON HORSEBACK !" (17.) 

or subordination. Their troops are a mob — their march a riot — their bat- 
tles, duels, and their war a scene of robbery and plunder; and experience 
has proved them totally inadequate to combat with the organized cavalry 
ofEurope, though their whole lives have been spent in military exerci- 
ses ;" and such would be the character of any force thus organized. 

{16.) On this point, allow me to show an extract from a " Life of Har- 
rison," published by his political friends. It is thus: 

"In the plan for the ensuing campaign, to the surprise of the public, 
General Harrison was designated for a service far removed from any post 
of danger, and inferior to that which he hud a right to expect. Regard- 
less of the memorable victories(?) which this gallant and experienced of- 
ficer had won, and unmindful of the various and important services which 
he had rendered to his country, the secretary of war. (Armstrong,) saw 
fit to assign to bun the command of a district, where he would be compelled 
to remain inactive, while others were appointed to those more arduous- 
duties which he had heretofore performed with so much honor to himself 
and to the nation. As if still unsatisfied with this egregious insult, which 
he had oflered to General Harrison, Secretary Armstrong, on the 25th of 
April, 1814, appointed a subordinate officer to a seperate command with- 
in his district, and at the same time, opened a correspondence with the sub- 
alterns of the anmj nnder his command; and even went so far as to issue 
orders to them directly, instead of communicating his orders through the 
commander, a conrse ivhich good discipline required to be observed, and 
which all previous practice had sanctioned. On the receipt of this intel- 
ligence. General Harrison instantly addressed a letter to the ^^ecretary, 
tendering his resignation, with a notillcation thereof to the President." 

I will not urge that General Harrison acted improperly for a man who 
had not confidence in his own capacity, when he tendered his resigna- 
tion: for it does seem that the course of conduct pursued by the then ad- 
ministration towards him, was a very frank indication on the part of the 
government, that his services were no longer desired — or at least, that they 
were not held in any very high estimation ! But, why should he h-ive com- 
plained, if he had treated his ovin officers in the same manner, as he 
says he did? The President was the commander-in-chief of the whole 
military force of the nation, and it was as just for him to put no trust in Ge- 
neral Harrison, as it was for General Harrison to put no trust in the offi- 
cers who were placed under his command ! 

(17.) If a commander-in-chief trusts " no colonel or other officer" with 



6? 

The only advancement of any principle made by General Har- 
rison in his speech at Fort Meigs, was a declaration in favor of 
the pension system — andtheclaimof a pension for himself. 

There is no principle more at variance with republican institu- 
tions, than that of granting pensions to individuals for services per- 
formed as publir officers. Of monarchy, the pension system is the 
foundation, and of an aristocracy, it is its pillars. In Great Bri- 
tain it has been used, as well as in all other nations of Europe, 
to sustain the prerogative of the crown, and a titled nobility ; and 
one of its most recent acts has been to take from the pockets of 
the laboring people of Great Britain, an annual sum of $10,000, 
and to bestow the same upon Sir John Colborn, with the title of 
Lord Seaton, as a reward for having murdered and destroyed 
your people, and laid waste your country. But for the system of 
granting pensions, which is used by monarchical and aristocrati- 
cal governments as a license to rob the many to enrich the few, 
the oppressed milhons would no longer live in abject and 
degraded servitude, but according to the laws of their own being, 
would fully enjoy the birthright of their creation. To assume 
it here, would soon put an end to civil liberty in our country ; 
and if it could be supposed that the people of your country were 
willing to re-establish a system, so destructive in its operations 
to political freedom, I believe that the desire which is now enter- 
tained by a large portion of the people of the United States, for the 
liberation of your country from the domination of Great Britain, 
would then cease to exist. 

" I see my old companions here," said General Harrison. " Would to 
God that it had been in my power, to have made them comfortable and 
happy — that their sun might go down in peace. But, fellow-citizens, 
they remiin unprovided for — momaneufs of the irigratitnde of my country! 
It was with the greatest difficulty, that the existing pension act, was pass- 
ed through Congress. [The act granting pensions to the soldiers of the 
revolution.] Wliy were the brave soldiers who fought under Wayne, 
excluded ? Soldiers, who suffered far more, than they who fought in the 
revolution proper. ****** 

" I can only say," continued he, " that if it should ever be in my pow- 
er to pay the debt which is due these brave, but neglected men, that debt 
shall first of all, be paid." 

the arrangements of his army, and he falls at the moment he is attacked 
bj' an enemy, the army must necessarily be defeated from the want of a 
second officer, acquainted with its details, to command. Such was the 
condition of most of the ancient Greek armies ; and the loss of their chief 
generally proved the loss of the battle. But, the history of the military 
operations of more modern times, where the armies have not consisted of 
mere " master and slaves," but officers and soldiers, intelligent, and duly 
informed of the matters in which they were engaged, and all having their 
trusts and their responsiOilcties, gives us accounts of many battles, among 
svhich I might name that of the Plain? of Abraham, where victories have 
been achieved by armies after their chief had fallen. 



63 

In granting pensions to the soldiers of tlie revolution, our go- 
vernment (I'd but give them their pay for their services, which 
they had nut before received. The amount was due them. Not 
so with the soldiers who served under VV^yne. They received 
their wages in good and current money ; and there was no im- 
propriety "in excluding the soldiers who fought under Wayne," 
while pensions were bestowed on those ''who fought in the re- 
volution," for their claims were debts which we owed to men 
who had perilled their lives for the inestimab'o blessings which 
we now enjoy, not in the ordinary capacity of soldiers — but they 
had b ittled for us against British executioners, by whom, if th^ 
had been subdued, tiiey would have been led to the scaffold ! ^ ' 

"I have said," says General Harrison, "that the soldiers un- 
der Wayne experienced greater hardships, even than the soldiers 
of the revolution— and it is so." If, in this, General Harrison 
epeaks the truth, then, indeed, has all history on the subject lied. 
The soldiers of every army have to endure more or less of pri- 
vations. But where could the soldiers of Wayne's army have 
endured privations and sufferings, which should compare with 
those of the soldiers of the revoltion ? 

If pensions were granted by our government to the Indian war- 
riors who served under Wayne, are there not other classes now 
and like to be still more, of Indian warriors, whose claims are 
as just as theirs? May not those who served at Tippecanoe, 
those who served with Johnson at the Thames, those who served 
with Jackson in the Seminole war, and those who are now on 
services in the Floridas, put in equal claims ? In think so, and that 
we might go on and pension half the nation if we should once 
adopt and act upon General Harrison's principle, which is like 
unto John Randolph's — i. e. ^^Jioe loaves and two fishes." For you 
must understand that if pensions were granted to those who 
served in Wayne's army, it is WILLIAM HENRY HARRI- 
SON who would gain the most by it, as he, a captain in that 
army, v/ouldhold the first place on th? list of the highest grade 
of pensioners, which would secure to him the comfortable allow- 
ance of FORTY DOLLARS PER MONTH, for the remainder 
of his life, and this added to the $200,000 he has already re- 
ceived from the public treasury of " his ungrateful country," 
would unquestionably make him quite "happy," and allow "his 
sun to go down in peace." 

Now, sir, if it is shown, (as asserted in a number of British 
Whig papers in 1836,) ''that General Harrison is a man nf no 
particular respectability of character, ivholli/ obscure as to talents, 
and decidedly insiirnificant, so far as needed abilities are concerned, 
for the high office for which he is proposed," and that he has avowed 
notions in regard to military operations, which if adopted as a 



64 

criterion, would have the effect to frustrate any military move- 
•ments which might hereafter be attempted to achieve the inde- 
pendence of the Canadas, these aiford a good reason why you, 
as well as every other well wisher of our democratic institutions, 
ought not to desire his elevation to the Chief Magistracy of this 
nation. 

The high station, which was first filled by a Washington and 
then by a Jefferson, should never be occupied but by men of " su- 
perior and splendid talents," whose political opinions are well 
known and established by a long public career. Such is con- 
ceded to Mr. Van Buren, even by his political opponents ; and 
flie'British Whig party have many such men in their ranks. 
They number with their party, men of the most splendid talents 
in the Union ; yet they propose no such man to the people as a 
candidate for the presidency, but offer an individual who is con- 
fessedly destitute of all such qualities, whom they cause to as- 
sume as many shapes as Proteus, and to profess every manner 
of principle to suit their purposes in the different sections of 
our country. Is not this then, evidence not to be doubted, that 
the British Whig party entertain principles so adverse to the 
true interests of our people, that they dare not go to them with 
a candidate for their sufirages who has been identified with those 
principles ] So it presents itself to me. From such a party you 
have no favors to expect for the cause of your country; and should 
they so far succeed in their course of fraud with our people, as to 
obtain the election of General Harrison, we shall find that a 
residence in the White House at Washington, will no more con- 
stitute him an able and high minded President, than the wearing 
of a sword would make him a great general ; and, then, among 
the evils to our country which would result from the elevation of 
a man of ordinary talents and capacity, it would not be the least, 
that it increases the number of aspirants, and forms a precedent 
for men of small parts to put themselves up for this high 
station — which is lessened in its value as ofien as it is 
filled by inferior men. But, as the people of these United 
States have heretofore determined that they would not trust the 
administration of our government in the hands of either Henry 
Clay or Daniel Webster — 1 am not yet prepared to believe that 
they can be so cheated as to allow those same individuals, under 
the name of WiUiam Henry Harrison, to seize upon the reins of 
the government. 

Sir, I am. 

Very respectfully. 

Your obedient servant, 

TH: J. SUTHEFvLAND. 









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